


Life During Wartime

by Sophia_Bee



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Ensemble Cast, Fix-It, M/M, Mutant Hate, Mutant Powers, Mutant Rights, POV Erik, Plotty, Sad, Smoking, Terrorism, War, Weapon X Project, as in I completely ignored Charles being injured in the first place
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-08
Updated: 2014-11-11
Packaged: 2018-02-24 14:01:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 31,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2583920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sophia_Bee/pseuds/Sophia_Bee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post XMFC, Erik is with the Brotherhood and the climate for mutants in the states is getting increasingly dangerous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't really know how to describe this, except I pretty much made up all of it. It's canon-ish/comicverse-ish, taking place after XMFC, set in the 60s but does not follow XMDoFP at all, although it does reference Weapon X and Stryker from X2 and takes inspiration from God Love, Man Kills. Emma Frost has a strong role. It will be multi-chapter. It's also a fix-it, or in this case, just ignore canon entirely and Charles is never paralyzed. I hope you enjoy it.

They head north in the spring.

Emma slumps in the back seat, her blonde hair mostly tucked under a black wool hat, and she looks strangely small and unimposing in her the army green military jacket she wears. It's a trick. Get too near Emma Frost and she will cut you. She starts patting around the many pockets of her jacket and Erik glances in the rear view mirror, knowing what she's looking for before she pulls out the pack of cigarettes.

"Not in my car, Emma," Erik growls. She throws him an annoyed glance.

"Not your car, Erik," she spits back, sounding annoyed, "who hot wired this thing?"

Point taken. Still....

"...and it's not like any of us are going to die from this anyway," Emma sighs. She looks out the window, the unlit cigarette dangling from her fingertips. Emma is right. Death from cancer is a luxury they don't have. They wait a different fate, one already dealt to too many of their kind. It's only a matter of time.

"Just one," Erik growls, "and crack open the fucking window. I hate the smell." He does not glance back again, just hears the flick of a lighter then the smell of cigarette smoke wafts forward. Erik wrinkles his nose.

It had been a year since it started.

No one noticed at first. Like all things horrible it started small. Erik remembers that before the laws and regulations that eventually led to the annihilation of an entire people there were things like this. Violence here and there, reports if pogroms talked about in hushed tones over the dinner table. This time it was disappearances. One in the north. Another somewhere in Kansas. A third on the Gulf Coast. All mutants. All children. All seemingly random, except they weren't.

Erik remembers when Emma had burst into the hotel room they'd rented, her eyes wild.

"It's a pattern, Erik. A fucking pattern."

"A pattern," he repeats, his mind trying to make sense of what Emma is trying, but failing, to tell him.

"They're taking them. Someone is taking them."

She is pacing now, glancing his way as she passes in front of him, her hands clenched to her head as if she can’t stop her own thoughts.

"The children, Erik. OUR children. Mutant children."

Erik goes cold. They always come for the children first. Because children are the future and when you want to change the future you start by destorying the most innocent. He thinks of the gas chambers, the crematoriums, the children who never had a chance. They were HIS children turned to ash, his future in the flames. Now it's happening again, and again to HIS people.

It was indeed a pattern. All children the same age. All children that wouldn't be missed right away, living in poverty, parents working two jobs. All mutants who had manifested early. When they started looking they discovered there were around 25 missing, carefully plucked from random communities, skillfully taken in a manner to leave no connection to the other abductions, but Emma is whip smart and she had been paying attention, and she figured it out.

They start traveling around the country, investigating the abductions. Azazel teleports them to different towns, dropping them into a random park or alleyway in the cold hours of early morning, the best time to guarantee no witnesses to the random appearance of three strangers, one bright red and with a tail. Azazel then returns to their base in New York and waits for word from Emma that they are ready to return. Erik and Emma talk to the families, their faces blank, their moves robotic as if they are going through the motions, the air thick with grief. Every family is the same.They offer cake and coffee and tea and Emma and Erik perch on threadbare couches, sit in living rooms filled with the pictures of missing children. It takes a toll on them. Emma has dark circles under her eyes. Erik can’t sleep at night.

Slowly they get a better idea of what is happening. Did the parents see anything different before their child was taken. Well, there was that car down the street. The one that hasn’t been around since. There were those men who knocked on the door the day before, asking for directions. Children are being watched and then they’re being taken.

Then one escapes. She shows up hundreds of miles away from home, dirty, her hair matted, her clothes torn from days of hiking through the wilderness. An eight year old girl. The television hails the miracle, shows her shaking, eyes huge, holding onto a teddy bear provided by a volunteer. She has bruises on her face. She doesn’t talk, doesn’t tell them where she’s been or who has taken her. Erik stares at the newscast as they repeat her image over and over. Ligations on her wrists. Restraints. Puncture marks on her arms. Lab rat.

He tells this to Charles, sitting in his study, picking up one of the black pawns, about to make his move.

“They are taking our children, Charles.”

Emma hates that he visits Charles. Every time he goes she argues with him, spitting venom for her psychic rival, telling Erik he can’t be trusted. Erik just looks at her as she crosses her arms and stands in the middle of the room. Emma doesn’t understand. Erik must visit Charles.

“He wants to work with them, Erik,” Emma hisses, “wants to spare the lives of humans, the one who steal our children and experiment on them.”

Emma isn’t wrong. She and Charles see the world in fundamentally different ways. If Emma could, she would tear it all down, decimate the humans who have wreaked havoc on anyone who is different than themselves, rip them open like scabbed over wound, watch them bleed to death. She simply doesn’t have the power, and this frustrates her to no end. Charles does have the power. Charles could reach into the minds of every person on the earth and with one little twist of his psychic powers, decimate them, but he chooses not to. Instead he holds onto endless hope of healing. He and Emma exist on opposites planes, balancing each other, the world needing both her anger and his peace.

Erik is in between. He holds no hope when it comes to humanity but all the hope in the world when it comes to Charles, and he cannot let him go, cannot stop trying to get him to see that his way is not the way that will save mutant-kind. Charles would answer that he does not want to just save all mutants but all of humanity, that there must be a way for people to be better.

Emma does not want Erik to visit Charles but she doesn’t understand that he has no choice. He is a moth to Charles’ flame, drawn to him, aching for him, and no matter how much sits between them, he cannot stay away. It’s not nearly as simple as Emma would like it to be. Erik must live in this world alone, above everyone, leading the Brotherhood, the messiah of the mutants. But Erik is a person under all that, a person who craves company and touch, who sometimes only wants to press himself against the one person in the world who understands him, to feel his skin against his, the way his chest rises up and down, the place his hand on his chest and feel his heartbeat. This is why he visits Charles. Because he needs him. He’s needed him from the moment they met.

It is no simple thing to need someone in that way, especially when they aren’t yours to have. As long as there are threats to mutants, as long as people are stealing mutant children for experiments, as long as politicians preach anti-mutant rhetoric to frenzied crowds, Erik cannot have the peace that Charles offers him. As long as there is a fight, he must be in it.

“Our children, Charles.” Erik says forcefully. “YOUR children.”

Charles looks at him, his eyes soft and kind, and understanding. He knows Erik’s pain.

“I have heard of something going on,” Charles says thoughtfully. “Rumors.”

“They are experimenting on them,” Erik says, tears welling up in his eyes. What is unspoken between them is Erik’s next thought. Just as they experimented on ME.

Charles says nothing. There is nothing he can say, nothing he can do.

That night Charles does his best to soothe away Erik’s pain, covering his skin with kisses, lingering on his scars, telling Erik that he’s sorry, and for just a brief moment Erik can forget that holds the weight of the world on his shoulders.

After the girl is found, the abductions stop. The world has gotten too close to the truth. Emma loses the trail. Erik punches a wall in frustration. There are still children out there. They are still suffering. They still need to be saved.

It’s not long before their invisible, unknown foes make an entirely different move.

Registration starts. It’s a small law, just to keep things in order, tacked onto a farm subsidies bill, and it’s really no big deal. That’s what the talking heads on the television say. They just want a database, a record, a chance to make sure the mutant population is healthy. All you need to do is give them your name.

And your blood.

Someone is studying mutants.

If Erik and the Brotherhood have been semi-underground up until this point, moving from cheap hotel to cheap hotel, this pushes them entirely underground. It’s not without reservations. Erik says they need to do this now. He’s seen what happens when things start being chipped at bit by bit. Azazel says he isn’t ready to disappear entirely, that things aren’t that bad, and he storms off, telling Erik that he’s quitting the Brotherhood. Considering that Azazel quits every other month or so, Erik watches him leave without a word, wondering if this time it will stick. It will be inconvenient not to have a teleporter amongst them but he won’t have to deal with Azazel for a little bit.

Mystique growls that she’s out of there as well, and the next day she shows up in the doorway of Erik’s room in non-blue form, dressed in jeans and a military jacket, a pack on her back.

“I’m going north,” she tells Erik. Canada. A huge swathe of wilderness where someone with decent skills can survive. If anyone will survive, it’s Mystique. Erik looks at her with admiration. She’s the only one of the group who is even close to his equal. She’s also the only one who is any threat to his leadership, and she knows his weakness. She knows that no matter how much he preaches mutant rights, Erik is not far from Charles in philosophy. It’s inevitable that they will come to heads over this, but for right now, she is running and he is staying. Their clash over power is delayed for a bit longer.

“Say goodbye to him for me,” she says, her eyes sad. Erik thinks it’s so strange to be looking at blonde hair and blue eyes, yet it’s also like coming home in a way. He hasn’t seen Raven for so long, she’s been Mystique ever since they left the beach in Cuba.

Say goodbye to him.

They both know who he’s talking about.

It’s now just him and Emma. They buy new IDs. Erik becomes John Rodriguez. Emma is Emily Snow. Fitting. Erik laughs and Emma glares at him. Their histories as mutants are wiped out. Erik Lehnsherr drops off the map.

The day after they announce the registration, Erik tells Emma he’s going away for a couple days. She quirks her mouth a little.

“He can take care of himself, you know,” she says haughtily.

“I just have to know,” Erik says.

"He's your weak spot, Lehnsherr," Emma says, surprisingly enough without her usual vitriol. Erik doesn't answer because there’s no need to. They both know she’s right.

He can’t continue without knowing what Charles will do, because if they come for Charles, Erik will not survive. If they take him and torture him like Shaw had tortured Erik, like that little girl had been tortured, Erik will not survive. He must know and he must tell Charles Xavier one more time that he is an utter, complete, naive idiot for trusting that anything is going to work out in this life. He cannot let this moment pass without his voice being heard.

When Erik arrives at the mansion and levitates himself through the bedroom, Charles is waiting for him. He is standing in the middle of his room in those damned striped pajamas that make him look a bit like a little kid. He looks at Erik and the despair in his eyes causes Erik physical pain. He doesn't have to say anything. The look on his face says it all.

“No, Charles,” Erik gasps, “Please, no.”

Charles doesn't answer. His fingers go to the buttons on his pajama top and he slowly undoes them until it’s hanging open. He shrugs it off, letting it fall to the floor, then pulls his pajama pants down until he’s standing naked and aroused in front of Erik, entirely vulnerable, as if the only thing he has left to give is himself. Erik’s breath hitches and he feels tears spring to his eyes.

“I need you,” Charles says softly. The registration, his decision, are pushed aside, and Erik can’t think about the fact that Charles asking for sex right away means he knows that it’s their only common ground right now. This visit is not going to end well.

Erik fucks Charles hard, fucks him until he’s begging for release. Charles sobs out his name, tears wetting his cheeks. When they are done, sticky and spent, Erik curls against Charles’ back and whisper in his hair.

“You won’t hide from them, will you? You won't come with me."

"No."

"But you won't register."

"No."

"Charles..."

"We're safe here, Erik. A small boarding school in upstate New York. No one will come looking..."

For now. The words hang in the air. Unspoken.

Erik wants to beg, to get in his knees and plead that for once Charles take care of himself and not everyone else around him. His arms tighten around Charles, holding him closer, memorizing the way he feels against him. They breathe in time and slowly Erik feels himself start to drift off to sleep. He should go. Staying the night is a mistake, makes him more vulnerable, but he cannot bring himself to leave the man who holds his heart sooner than he has to. His weakness.

"She's gone, hasn't she?"

Charles voice, heavy with sleep startles Erik just as he's about to give into the darkness of that rare creature, a truly peaceful, dreamless sleep. The kind he can only get when he sleeps next to Charles.

Mystique. Raven.

"Yes. North. A couple days ago."

"And you're going as well."

Tears sting Erik's eyes. He may not follow Raven exactly, but he is going underground. He is going to fight. And at some point they too will go North to safety. If only Charles would come with him, Erik would promise to only seek sanctuary, to not wreck the destruction he wants on the government, if only Charles would stay by his side. He would set aside Magneto and just be Erik.

He doesn’t say any of this to Charles because they both know his promises wouldn’t last long.

"I'm going too." Erik whispers into the darkness. Charles breath hitches. He doesn’t say anything, then after a long time, he speaks, his voice quiet, strained and what he says almost destroys Erik.

"I might die without you."

"You won't." Erik answers. The same may not be true for himself.

It’s not like they really have each other now, but it’s better than facing the fact that soon they will have nothing.

\-----

The brotherhood has become a duo. Emma is quite perturbed that she is now 50% of the organization but it continues to retain what she rightfully considers to be a sexist name. Erik rolls his eyes. Now is not the time to concern themselves with whether or not the name is appropriate. They have a power plant to destroy.

They are crouched in the snow, both dressed in white to hide their presence. The air is so cold that Erik can’t feel the tip of his nose. Emma is bemoaning the fact that Erik has forbade her to simply crush the minds of guards.

“They are regular men, with families,” Erik tells her. She glares at him.

“You sound less and less like Magneto every day and more and more like fucking Charles Xavier.”

“Shut the fuck up, Emma.” Erik hisses. She’s right. It’s like Charles has lodged himself into Erik’s brain and he can’t making one single fucking decision without it being sent through the filter of Charles and his goddamn values. Erik promises himself he’ll let Emma crush a few minds next time, especially if they’re particularly vile.

“It’s time,” Emma says as she looks through her binoculars.

Erik raises his hands and reaches towards the steel beams of the factory and they start to hum and call to him. He stretches out his arms and they start to tremble with exertion, and he’s reminded of another day, a lifetime ago, when he finally felt the full extent of his powers and Charles had wiped his eyes to brush away tears.

The power plant shakes, as if the earth below it is moving, and the iron beams creak and with a quick twist of his hands, Erik pulls the entire building inwards and it collapses with a deafening ‘boom’. Emma gives Erik a look of admiration and Erik can’t help but smile. There are few things that feel better than the way metal sings to him.

“Let’s go!” Emma yells over the rumble of the collapsing building, and Erik jumps up from where he’s been lying in the snow and they both sprint across the frozen landscape towards where they’ve hidden the car. The wail of emergency sirens echos in the distance, and Erik knows they have enough time to avoid being seen. It’s not like he and Emma couldn’t easily defeat the police, but so far they have been able to wreak a path of terror from state to state and no one has identified who they are. If they are seen by law enforcement it’s only a matter of time before they figure out who they are and come after them. For a government who is determined to treat its mutant citizens as second class citizens, they have no qualms about using mutants powers to their advantage, and Erik has no doubt they could coerce some poor mutant into tracking him and Emma, and then everyone would be in danger. And once they found out that it was Erik Lehnsherr, aka Magneto, who was destroying power plants, train tracks, and government facilities, it would only be a matter of time before they made the connection between Erik and Charles Xavier.

Erik wishes Charles had come with him. If they were together at least he would know the telepath was safe. And Charles wouldn’t need to be talked out of crushing minds on a regular basis, and although Emma is useful, he finds the look on her face to be perpetually sour.

They make it back to their car and Emma throws herself into the drivers seat, turning the key and listening to the engine roar to life. Erik throws himself flat into the back seat and Emma pulls her hat down further over her head as they speed away, tires squealing. Emma uses her telepathy to scan the area, wiping the memory of anyone who sees their car careening away from power plant, which usually works. But this time, she misses one.

A boy. A boy who is uncannily good with numbers, who stares at the license plate of the car speeding away. It will be the first break in the case. The first step on a path that will lead towards Charles and his beloved school. Erik doesn’t know this yet, but he will.

They sleep in the car and eat fast food, Erik missing the warm, soft beds at Westchester and the warm, soft body of Charles nestled next to him. It’s not an ache that comes and goes, it’s an ache that stays with him constantly, occasionally becoming unbearable. Emma tells him they’re going to need to ditch this car soon. They do this every few days. Always on the move.

The first clue that something is wrong comes at their next target. It’s a week later and they’re going to attack the Mutant Registry headquarters in Topeka. It should be an easy job. It’s not even guarded at night. Erik plans to break in, set fire to all the computers, then bring the building down. Except when they get there, there are people waiting for them. Worst of all, Emma finds that her telepathy is useless. They have blockers. Fucking blockers, one of the few anti-mutant technologies they’ve managed to develop. Erik paces and spews out profanity when Emma returns from scouting out the location and reports this. They’ve been identified. It’s the only explanation. And the government is lying in wait. Their reign of terror has ended.

It’s time to go north. It’s time to find Raven and go into hiding until things blow over and then maybe they can get back to their war. They drive until they find a spot far out of the way and Emma turns off the engine, then lies across the front seat, smoking a cigarette, ignoring Erik’s annoyed muttering.

“It had to come to an end, Lehnsherr.” she says, taking a long drag. "All things come to an end."

"How very fatalistic of you, Emma."

"I prefer to think of myself as realistic "

Emma's cigarette glows in the dark. Erik sighs and shifts around in the back seat, trying to get comfortable. He doesn't relish another night sleeping in a car, in the cold. He wishes for a warmer blanket and four walls.

"Still..." Erik says. His voice trails off.

"Still what Lehnsherr? We have to get moving before light and we need to find another car. I need to sleep. Enough of this fucking heart to heart."

Emma. Always charming.

"I just wish we'd been able to find those kids."

The cigarette glows. Emma is quiet for a long time.

"Maybe we can." She finally says.

It turns out that Emma Frost isn't talking out her ass. For all her faults, lack of conviction is not one of them, and it seems that Emma has been giving the kidnapped kids some thought. She even has a plan.

"We need the kid that got away," she tells Erik. "I can read her mind, trace her path."

It's actually a reasonable plan.

The girl and her parents live in a trailer park on a country town just outside New Orleans. It's poverty at it's finest with rusting mobile homes and dirt roads that have turned to mud with the winter rains. It's too warm and muggy for the time of the year and Erik feels a bead of sweat roll down the side of his face.

Emma looks around and sneers in disdain at the ugliness around her. Erik looks at her and feels annoyed.

“Thirty percent more of the mutant population lives in poverty than their non-mutant counterparts,” Erik says, his voice tinged with disdain for Emma. “If a mutant wants to do a decent day’s work and not rely on using their powers for gain, this is how a lot of them live.”

Emma sneers at him.

“Thank you, Professor Xavier, champion of the people. Sometimes you sound so much like him I want to slap you.”

She’s right. He can hear Charles telling him that exact thing as they sipped scotch next to the fireplace in his study on a cold winter night years ago. He can hear Charles telling him that war would only bring death, that it wouldn’t bring jobs, food to the table, good education or give mutants a future. He can hear him tell him that fighting for equality is the only option. It’s only through advocating for equal rights that anyone will ever find any peaceable existence.

“Anyway,” Emma says, her voice cold, “I grew up in a place exactly like this. I know all about it. So fuck you Lehnsherr.”

They decide to do some groundwork. This is after Emma suggest that they just kidnap the girl, and Erik again wonders if Emma might lack some important component of decency. It’s unconscionable to consider re terrorizing a little girl. Emma rolls her eyes and mutters something about a means to end and that Erik has gone soft. In the end he convinces her to do some psychic detective work, to gently probe the minds of the people inside the motor home where the family and the girl reside. They spend a couple days crouched in the piney woods that surround the trailer park, sweating as Emma gathers information.

“They’re angry.” Emma tells him. “someone took their girl and tortured her and no one is bothering to find out who or why. The girl can’t sleep. The dad drinks to much. He has a shot gun and thinks about killing someone, anyone, on a regular basis, just to get taken seriously.”

They decide that this is a job for Magneto. He can appeal to them in a way that Erik Lehnsherr may not be able to. Magneto is about rebellion, about mutant rights. He’s the best person to tell these people that they have been wronged and that someone is actually willing to fight for them.

It works. Emma spends an hour reading the girl’s mind. Erik sits in his suit with his cape pulling uncomfortably, sweating in his helmet and drinks glasses of sweet tea while the girl’s mother thanks him profusely. Finally Emma says she’s done and Erik stands to leave.

“Make them pay,” the girl’s dad says. “our little girl hasn’t been the same since she came back, we can’t afford to get her the help she needs, she’s damaged. Make them pay.”

Erik promises them that they will pay.

They leave the trailer park, walking side by side, and return to their car. Erik quickly strips off his suit, pulling back on his regular clothes, and Emma turns her head away, leaning on the car and smoking another cigarette.

“It’s Stryker, Erik.” she says. “The children are in Bethesda. They’re being experimented on."

Lab rats.

Erik clenches his fists. The longer they stay in the states, the longer they avoid going north, the more chance they will be caught, and if they are caught they will no longer be any help to anyone. But they cannot leave the children in the hands of Stryker, a mad scientist with too much power and influence. They will need Azazel. Twenty five children will need to be saved, if all of the are still alive. Erik’s stomach clenches. There is no way to move that many without his help.

They find Azazel, still in New York, stinking of vodka and passed out in a dirty hotel bed. After spending a few days sobering him up, they find another car and head to Maryland. Now that they know where the children are, it won’t be too hard to break them out.

For all their efforts, humans have not been able to find a way to truly hold back mutants. The scientists who are trying to learn ways to defeat or change mutations are using slide rules and computers the size of rooms that Erik can crush with a wave of his hand. Bullets can’t touch him. Short of putting all the population in danger with an atom bomb, the humans aren’t even close to a weapon that can touch the mutants. Yet. Their fear drives them to keep working, to steal children in order to discover that elusive key to annihilation of an entire species. Still, they haven’t found it yet and there isn’t a building that can hold back the great and powerful Magneto.

He will save the children. He will crush the humans in the process.

It’s not a hard job. Unlike Topeka, no one expects them. They have indignant Azazel, who gets them inside with an annoyed roll of his eyes, being a somewhat testy teleporter. His indignation stems from the fact that Erik had made the strategic mistake of questioning whether or not he would be able to handle a large group of children. Emma had asked Erik if he could be more of an idiot. In the end, Azazel had agreed to help them. They were children after all and they needed help.

After Azazel drops them inside, Erik and Emma wander down long corridors lit by flickering fluorescent lights, the walls cast in their cool blue tones. Their footsteps echoed loudly, but neither bothered to mask their approach. Thanks to Emma touching every mind in the facility, the people who worked there were fast asleep, no knowledge that they have an intruder. All Erik had needed to do was short circuit the security system and they were in.

“It’s cold in here,” Emma says as they make their way down another corridor. The ice queen shivers a little and Erik think the whole place has a chill that feels like death. He fights the sinking feeling in his stomach as they make yet another turn. Where are the children? They continue to twist and turn, going down and down, and Erik wonders exactly how deep this facility goes.

He will know more about this place in the future, and many more like it. They will become the crux in the human’s fight against mutant-kind. Right now this is just a lab, a side project Stryker’s. At the moment Stryker isn’t in the facility. He’s at home with his family, sitting at the table over dinner, laughing with his wife. His infant son, Jason, is in his wife’s arms. Jason, who will turn out to be what his father fears the most in the world. A mutant. Erik doesn’t know it, but the twisting corridors he wanders, the steel doors that open into labs and treatment rooms, is all part of the very beginning stages, the early gestation of one of the greatest threats mutant will ever face: Weapon X.

Right now all he knows is that there are children somewhere in this building, and no matter how hard Emma tries, she cannot feel them.

“It’s all quiet, Erik,” she mutters, leaned against a wall where they have stopped for a moment so she can do another mental sweep. “So quiet.”

“It could be more blockers,” Eriks says, not wanting to voice the other possibility. It’s quiet because they are are all dead.

Blockers are a new technology. Psionic waves that the government has somehow managed to fabricate, that work to block psychics. It’s an early development in the developing war between humans and mutant. Erik wonders how many low-level psychics had to die for them to figure out how to make their blockers work. He thinks that at least they never figured out that Charles exists. At least not yet.

Erik feels sick.

After pushing through every door they can find, stumbling on empty room after empty room, they come across a treatment room that seems to be empty until Erik hears a small voice calling.

...help help…

“Emma!” Erik says, freezing. “I hear someone.”

They search the room, with its sterile stainless steel walls and drain in the floor. Better to wash the blood away. Erik knows this from his time with Shaw. It should disgust him, but he simply notes the detail and moves on. He and Emma run their hands over walls, searching for a door, some sort of panel, because the small voice is coming from behind one of the walls.

“Erik!” Emma yells, her hands busy pulling at something. He crosses to the other side of the room where she’s starting to frantically push at a panel. He sees that it is indeed a door, and he reaches out of the metal and makes it do his bidding, peeling what appears to be an automatic door back from the wall and revealing yet another corridor. In the middle of it stands a child. A girl, not more than eight years old, long dirty hair hanging down, wearing an oversized hospital down.

“Are you one of them?” she asks quietly, staring at them. “I’ve never seen you before,” Erik steps towards her and she lurches backwards, fear filling her eyes. Her whole body starts to shake.

“Come here, sugar,” Emma says, crouching down and holding out her hand. She is smiling and her eyes are kind, and the girl’s frame relaxes as she steps forward. Erik watches as Emma takes the girl into her arms and he thinks her cheeks might be wet. It’s one of those moments when he is reminded of Emma’s decency. Those moments are few and far between, but sometimes her compassion shocks him.

There are only fifteen children left. Ten have been taken away, the survivors tell him, which Erik suspects means they were no longer useful to their tormentors and have been killed. All the children are terrified, flinching when touched. All bear marks of torture and experiments. Burns. Needle marks. All of them will never be the same.

They need help.

Erik will get them help.

Emma calls Azazel, who his there in a flash, the scent of sulfur in the air.

“Are you sure?” Emma asks Erik as she gathers the children around her. Like the first girl, who tells them her name is Molly, the children trust Emma.

Erik nods. He’s sure. There is only one person he knows who can help these children, who will keep them safe. There is only one person he trusts.

“It will be fine.”

“He doesn’t know we’re coming.”

“He’ll still be fine. This is what he does. He takes care of children. He takes care of people.”

“If you say so. You’re the one he’ll listen to anyways,” Emma says, giving Erik a knowing look. Erik ignores her. Emma has never outright asked Erik about his relationship with Charles, and he has never volunteered anything to her. It’s none of her business, and even if she thinks she knows, even if she’s right, when it comes to what’s important to him, Emma Frost can fuck off.

“Are you ready, Azazel?”

Azazel mutters something about needing some vodka then nods. He moves to stand in the middle of the small group and with a nod of his head, they disappear.

He’s going to the one person who he thinks can help the children, the one person he knows will take them in, care for them and heal them. Charles.

Erik doesn’t know it yet, but he’ll find out, and sooner than later. He has started the chain of events that will change Erik and Charles forever.

*****

They leave in the spring.

There is still snow on the ground when they appear on the lawn of Westchester. The sun sinking beneath the horizon, sending out its last bright rays just before it dies and night returns. Erik blinks and he hears someone calling his name. He’ll never get used to teleporting, and briefly he thinks that he’s grateful that he’s a metal bender and not a teleporter, although he suspects a teleporter might not enjoy the singing of metal under his skin, and if Erik were a teleporter it might feel like second nature to pop from place to place. He mostly seems to find it disorienting and it takes him a few moments to realize that the person yelling his name is Hank McCoy.

“Magneto!”

To the people at the mansion, he is Magneto. The one who turned away from their beloved Professor. He is a terrorist and extremist. They don’t know that he still visits Charles from time to time. All they know is he is a wanted man. Erik shakes his head a little. Not Magneto today. Just Erik. He puts up both his hands in a gesture of surrender.

“Get Charles!” Erik yells back at Hank, “We need help.”

The children are shivering and scared, one of them is crying uncontrollably. They have been confined for so long that the open space of the outdoors terrifies them. Erik wants to scoop them up and run them into the mansion but if he does this it could be interpreted as an attack.

“You’re going to put us all in danger,” Hank yells, “you can’t be here, you need to leave now. Leave us alone.”

Hank is right. Erik banishes the thought.

“I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t have to.” Erik says irritably, “I need Charles. Get him and all will be clear.”

“Fuck you, Erik.”

“Get him,” Erik hisses. He does not want to waste his time with the likes of the self-hating Hank McCoy. He needs Charles. Hank stares at him, mouth hanging open. He closes it then shakes his head.

“I’ll never understand what hold you have over him, Lehnsherr,” Hank says, then turns and walks back towards the mansion. Emma shifts next to Erik and lets out a small laugh.

“I guess he has no idea how much Xavier likes your penis,” she says bluntly. She feels around her jacket and finds her pack of cigarettes, pulling one out, then lights it, taking a deep drag. Erik looks at Emma with both eyebrows raised. It appears she isn’t unclear about his relationship with Charles.

By the time Charles strides across the lawn towards them, Emma’s cigarette is half gone. She absently flicks ash onto the manicured lawn of the mansion and sighs heavily as Charles gets closer. Erik can see that Charles is thinner. There are dark circles under his eyes. His hair is a little longer. Charles goes up to Hank and says something to him. Hank looks annoyed, then confused and finally he nods his head. He turns to the group of children and tells them to follow him. There is food inside. And beds to sleep in. They’re safe now. Erik lets out a sigh of relief and silently thanks Charles.

Charles now turns to where Erik and Emma stand, walks towards them and stops just in front of Erik then glances over at Emma who is standing, glaring at him, cigarette halfway to her mouth.

“Please,” Charles says politely, his brow furrowing in annoyance, “we ask that no one smoke on the grounds.”

Emma says nothing. She just puts the cigarette to her mouth, takes a long drag, then blows the smoke out slowly. The two psychics stare at each other, sizing each other up, maybe communicating, who knows. Emma is the first one to break away from their game of mental chicken.

“Azazel is going to take me into town before he goes back to New York,” she says, tearing her eyes from Charles and looking over at Erik. “I need to get us a car. Supplies. We’re leaving when I get back.”

Emma takes another drag off her cigarette and turns her attention back to Charles.

“Xavier,” Emma sniffs, looking Charles up and down.

“Keep him safe,” Charles says, his voice hard as steel. Erik feels like he’s missing something, but he knows both well enough to know not to ask. Emma tosses her mostly finished cigarette onto the ground and grinds it with the heel of her heavy black boots.

“Don’t worry, sugar,” she says to Charles, her lips quirked in a smile, “I’m clear about what’s mine. And I’m clear about what isn’t. Don’t take too long to say goodbye.”

Emma turns and walks away, calling to Azazel, who moves to stand by her side and in an instant they are both gone, leaving Erik and Charles standing alone. Charles steps towards Erik, closer and closer until they are so close that Erik could easily lean down and…

He knows people might be watching. Hank, students, eyes trained on the two men standing so close to each other. Erik sways towards Charles, wanting to reach out and touch him, to run his fingers along the stubble along his jaw, to brush a thumb on his lower lip. Charles reaches up a hand and Erik swallows, trembling, thinking that Charles is going to wrap that hand around his neck and pull him towards him, but he doesn’t. Instead Charles settles his fingers on Erik’s temple and suddenly Erik’s brain is filled with memories that aren’t his and he squeezes his eyes shut as he’s flooded with emotion.

_Erik in the water, thrashing, Charles holding on for dear life, terrified that he will die._

_You’re not alone._

_Their first kiss, clumsy, groping._

_Joy._

_Charles’ bed. Letting go, letting everything go, sobbing Erik’s name over and over again._

_Love like Charles has never known before._

“Charles,” Erik gasps, his eyes flying open to find Charles looking at him, his eyes shining with tears.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have, but...but...I didn’t know how to say it, Erik,” Charles whispers, shivering a little and it takes all of Erik’s willpower not to draw him close, cradle him in his arms, warm him against his body. “I don’t have the words.”

Neither does Erik.

They said goodbye before, but fate has brought them one last moment together. They stand in silence, the mansion’s lights shining behind them, the darkness of Westchester’s woods stretching out on the other side. Erik thinks he can hear Charles’ heart beating.

“I want you,” Charles says into the stillness. “Please Erik. One last time.”

“I can’t,” Erik gasps, wanting to give Charles what he’s asking for, every cell in his body aching for this man, “I’ll never leave, and if I stay, you’ll never be safe.”

They have reached an impasse yet again, one of the many that mark their relationship.

“Then one last game?” Charles asks, offering a wistful smile. Yes, Erik nods but does not speak. He wants something more than this, one last moment to add to their shared memories, and if he can’t have Charles panting underneath him, he can have Charles across from him, Charles sipping on good scotch as he plots his next move on the chessboard, maybe even Charles smiling one more time.

The crocuses are pushing up through the ground, through the compacted snow that has almost turned to ice, and the wind that rattles the thin windows of the mansion is a little warmer. The sky is thick with clouds, threatening a torrential downpour. When Emma shows up, leaning her long frame in the doorway, leveling a glare at Erik, Erik knows this is it. His time is up. Charles watches him stand up and suddenly Charles’ voice is echoing in Erik’s head.

_[I will never stop loving you, Erik. Not until the day I die, and even after that. Goodbye my friend]_

Erik blinks back tears. He wants to add ‘for now’ to Charles’ voice in his head, but it would be a lie.

“Tell Raven I love her,” Charles says, his voice even, giving no clue that he is radiating waves of despair, although Erik is sure Emma can feel them.

“I will,” Erik answers.

They make the Canadian border sometime around 3 AM. Emma is driving, her hands gripping the wheel of the station wagon she hot wired out of some unsuspecting family’s driveway, and it comes complete with some kid’s blanket and stuffed animal discarded on the floor of the back seat. It has that faux wood paneling that was so popular five years ago and smells like women’s perfume. Emma is chain smoking now, and Erik has given up lecturing her. She is nursing a paper cup of strong, black coffee, eyes locked on the road in front of them.

Erik is staring out the window into the darkness, the only thing visible is the circle their headlights cast onto the road, the divider lines slipping by rhythmically.

“At least you have someone who loves you,” Emma says suddenly, as if she’s finishing a conversation she’s been keeping in her head. Erik startles and turns to stare at her profile.

His weakness.

When the sun comes up they stop for food at a diner in some small town. Emma stares at the menu and yawns then orders hashbrowns and eggs. Erik just drinks coffee.

“How’s your French?” Emma asks when their food arrives. Erik looks at her.

“Excellent,” he answers.

“Good. Raven is in the La Vérendrye wilderness. I found her last night. We’re going to Quebec.”

La Vérendrye is a massive wilderness area, but at some point some idiot had decided that maybe people would want to make the five hour drive from Montreal for a idyllic weekend on the shores of one of the hundreds of lakes, and had built a little fishing resort that had been quickly abandoned. Forty years later, it makes the perfect hideout for Raven and a small band of mutants who are escaping from the increasing oppressive policies of the American government.

It takes two more days of driving until they reach the access road that leads towards the lake. At that point Erik and Emma hoist heavy packs onto their backs and hike another two days through snow drifts, and luckily Emma had thought to bring along some warm sleeping bags, although Erik isn’t entirely convinced he’s not going to lose a finger or two to frostbite from this whole experience.

Halfway through the third day they finally come upon the group of dilapidated buildings clustered on the edge of the lake. Snow covers the roofs, and one of them has actually fallen in. Smoke rises out of the chimney of another. The hair on the back of Erik’s neck is standing up and he can sense metal around them - guns, bullets - pointed at them, although against him they would be useless. Emma tenses up next to him, her stance widening, her brow furrowing as she concentrates, no doubt trying to get a read the watchers who they cannot see but know are there.

“We’re not alone.” she says quietly.

“Obviously,” Erik mutters, balancing on the balls of his feet, torn between remaining still and trying to run.

The whole scene is eerily silent, then a loud whistle pierces the air.

“It’s them!” someone yells from one of the buildings. Slowly people start to emerge from the buildings, creeping from dark doorways, bulky figures in thick white coats, making them hard to see against the snow. They eye Erik and Emma warily and come closer, gathering around the two interlopers, then the circle parts and Mystique stops into the middle.

“You made it.”

She is not her usual blue but white as the snow around her, yellow eyes standing out of her pale face, hair changed to silver, but still naked as she’d been made to be in this world. Erik is happy to see her. He smiles.

“Nice welcome,” Emma snarls, radiating anger.

“Sorry,” Mystique shrugs, “we have to be careful. You were spotted by one of our patrols yesterday. From the description I thought it might be you two, but we weren’t sure if you were friend or foe.”

“Friend,” Erik growls.

The crowd starts to dissipate and Mystique gestures for Erik and Emma to follow her. She walks towards one of the many run-down buildings in the compound, talking as she leads them into the heart of the small community of exiles that has formed.

“So,” Mystique says, eyeing the weary travelers, “You finally decided to join us.”

“They made us when we blew up a power plant,” Emma says, her boots crunching over dirty snow, “at least that’s what I think. They have our names. It was time for us to get out.”

Mystique nods appreciatively. She looks at Erik.

“And Charles?” she asks.

Charles. That ache returns. The one that he sometimes manages to shake until something reminds him again of everything he’s lost.

“Safe.” Erik says with a clipped tone, hoping that will satisfy Mystique because he doesn’t want to answer any more quetions.

Mystique looks satisfied with this answer. Emma throws Erik a worried glance that adds a silent ‘for now’. She’s right.

Mystique stops outside one of the buildings and nods towards it.

“There are a couple sleeping pallets in here you can use. It’s not that clean but it works. You’ll have to share with three other people, but it’s a roof overhead. Wood stove keeps it warm. Welcome home.”

Mystique is the queen of this little kingdom, and for the first time Erik starts to see how much of leader she really is. Everyone in the compound has a job according to their skill set. Some have the mutation of speed and they are assigned to catch fish from the lake. Anyone with a fire mutation is tasked with lighting the stoves at night. Telepaths takes shifts sweeping the area for intruders. There is one teleporter who heads up a raiding party every couple weeks, picking a random town and taking a group there to steal supplies every couple weeks, careful not to leave a pattern. They eat together in one of the larger buildings.

There are even children, running around, getting into snowball fights, sledding down hills on flattened cardboard.

And they are all mutants. Every single one. It’s overall impressive. It’s Erik’s dream. Except there’s one person missing.

Mystique finds Erik one night, about a week after he and Emma arrived, and she comes to sit on the stairs outside the building where he and Emma sleep and hands him a steaming mug of tea. She is in her familiar blue form, concealed by the shadows of night and she gazes at him with those unswerving yellow eyes. Erik cradles the mug in his hands, feeling the warmth, the familiar smell of bergamot filling his nostrils. It reminds him of Westchester and sitting in the kitchen with Charles, discussing religion or politics, flirting with each other, knowing what comes next.

“Earl grey,” Mystique smiles. “No cream but some real sugar. Boom-boom brought me back some back from the last raiding party.”

“Boom-boom?” Erik says, raising an eyebrow. “Really?”

Mystique smiles then laughs a little, “she makes things go ‘boom’. It’s quite an appropriate name. We all use our mutant names here.”

Erik smiles appreciatively, for both the tea and the freedom that his mutant brothers and sister enjoy here in Mystique’s world.

They sit without speaking for a long time, Erik sipping the tea. Finally Mystique speaks, and Erik already knows what’s going to come out of her mouth before she says it.

“Is he going to be okay?”

Charles.

“He’s a fool,” Erik spits out, “a fucking naive idiotic fool.”

“You asked him to come with you and he said ‘no’” Mystique states, her voice tinged with weariness. Years of dealing with Charles and his ideals has worn both of them down.

“Of course,” Erik answers through tight lips, as if Mystique should have expected anything else.

“He’s not like us, Erik,” Mystique says, staring out into the darkness. “He can’t see what we can see.”

The entire compound is blacked out after sundown to avoid detection and the wilderness around the stretched out into this vast, unfathomable darkness. The sky above them is crystal clear, swathes of stars filling filling it as far as the eye can see, stretching from horizon to horizon like a great bowl. It’s breathtaking and like nothing Erik has ever seen in his life.

“I wish he could see this.” Erik says softly. He’s talking about the stars, but not only the stars. He’s talking about the compound, about the freedom the mutant have there, about the future that he and Mystique know is unavoidable. Why is Charles so blind to the obvious? Why is he willing to risk his life for a world that hates him.

“Me too,” Mystique sighs.

Two days later the compound is buzzing because a patrol caught an intruder. Emma, who Erik has barely seen since they arrived, materializes by his side, frowning at him in her usual sour manner.

“You’re going to want to see this, Lehnsherr,” she says.

She’s right.

Word that the patrol is close and Erik heads to the center of the compound, Emma trailing behind him, the ever-present cigarette dangling from her fingertips. The patrols inally arrives, their faces hard, bundled in typical white camouflage, their breath making puffs of clouds in the cold air. They are dragging the intruder with them, a hood over his head to keep him from seeing where he’s being taken, and he stumbles a little then is prodded with a light kick. One of the patrol growls, ‘hurry, human’.

Erik looks at the man standing bound in the middle of the growing crowd, noting that he’s underdressed for the weather, wearing only torn, dirty jeans. He sees that his hands are trembling and his fingernails are caked with dirt. The arms tied behind his back are thin and he’s only wearing a light winter jacket. Whoever he is, he looks like he’s had a hard time. Erik dismisses the man as a stranded motorist, someone who had the unfortunate fate of being lost in the wilderness and stumbled upon a band of rogue mutants. Not a threat. One of the telepaths will be able to wipe his memory and the teleporter can take him back to a nearby town. Problem solved. Erik has it all figured out.

Mystique arrives and the crowd parts once again for their leader. She walks up to the man and looks him over, then silently reaches out and pulls the hood off his head. When the mans’ face is revealed, it’s bruised, an infected looking gash across one cheek, one eye almost swollen shut, and Emma was right. He wanted to see this.

Oh my god.

Mystique’s hand is frozen in midair, still clutching the hood as she stares at the trespasser, and Erik hears his own voice, sounding far away and strange.

“No!” he cries and the crowd turns to stare at Erik who is standing, frozen in place.

It’s Hank.

Something has happened to Charles.

~TBC~


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hank wants to kill Magneto. Mystique has her own weakness. Emma and Erik team up again.

Hank lunges forward at the sound of Erik’s voice, his face contorted and his skin starts to become marbled with blue. This answers any question of whether or not the captive is a mutant or not.

“You killed him!” Hank screams as the mutants who have gathered rush forward to hold him back. He is snarling, snapping at Erik who stands next to Emma, his eyes locked on Hanks writhing form and he’s frozen in place. Hank is HERE, dirty, disheveled, and that means…

_Charles._

“I told you that you needed to see this,” Emma says matter-of-factly. Erik manages to resist finding the closest piece of metal and driving it through Emma’s skull.

Hank is screaming, pushing at the people around him away, trying to get to Erik.

"You led them to us!"

The mansion. Charles' home. Their home. Us. Charles. The children. Erik squeezes his eyes shut.

"Burned to the ground," Emma mutters, her eyes fixed on Hank as she reads his mind.

"They killed them all!" Hank screams, turning his face towards the sky, almost howling on grief.

_The children._

Erik does not move. If Hank were to break free right now, were to reach Erik and put his huge hands around his throat, squeezing until Erik could no longer breathe, he would not fight. He would not try to stop him, because Hank is right, and Erik should die for his sins.

_Charles._

Oh my god, Charles. His eyes blue, his skin under Erik's lips, the way he laughs, his face soft and full of love. Charles. Dead. Erik feels a wail start to build in his belly, a feeling of fathomless sorrow and loss that threatens to engulf him.

Emma glances over at Erik, who is starting to shake as he stares at Hank.

“He’s still alive, sugar.” she says softly, almost kindly. “they took him, so who knows if he’s okay. Most likely he’s not okay, but he’s still alive.”

Charles. Alive. Erik can breathe again. The rest are dead. Children. Dead. Charles. Still alive.

Erik knows what it’s means to be still alive, heart pumping, lungs still taking in oxygen. It doesn’t mean much. Emma’s words offer him no relief from the condemnation that surges through his veins. He led them to them. The children. He gave them Charles’ location by trying to get those children to safety.

The ground feels like it’s tilting under Erik.

Mystique is still standing in front of Hank, staring as he struggles then she seems to snap out of her trance.

“Sedatives!” she roars, looking around, her face panicked, “we need sedatives! NOW.”

Hank will not stop. His anger is boundless. He will not cede and it’s only a matter of time before the people trying to hold down the mighty beast, who is now fully blue and roaring with fury, tire and then he will break free. He is bellowing Erik’s name, screaming condemnations.

“MAGENTO!” screams Hank. Erik winces.

Mutants are running every which way, some seeking shelter, some running for help, others running to hold back Hank. The entire scene is chaos and as Erik watches, he sees Mystique step back, burying her face in her hands, her shoulders sagging and shaking. There is something in her posture that strikes him, a sadness that Erik has never seen in her before but one he himself is familiar with, and he knows that seeing Hank like this has struck Mystique deeply.

_We all have our weaknesses._

Someone runs towards the crowd holding a vial of something, a valuable tranquilizer, strong enough to knock out a horse and the mutants holding back Hank start to slowly push him towards the ground. He howls in agony as they hold him down and someone jams a needle into his thigh. He screams out Charles’ name over and over, and something else. ‘You killed him.’ Hanks’ head whips back and forth and slowly, slowly the fight leaves him and then his body goes limp.

Erik lets out a sigh of relief.

Mystique wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, glancing around to see if anyone has witnessed how seeing Hank like this has affected her, and Erik knows her secret is safe. Everyone is watching Hank, and the people holding him down are still gripping his arms and legs, unable to move, breathing hard from exertion, and everyone watches as Hank starts to morph back into his non-blue form, and the crisis over. No one is looking at Mystique except for Erik. And Emma, because Emma is always watching. She makes a satisfied little sound, a small ‘aha’, as she stands next to Erik, as if she suddenly understands something and Erik glances over at her and growls.

“Don’t ever mistake us for friends, Frost.” Erik snaps, “I have no compunction about snapping your neck if need be. Touch her and you have me to contend with.”

Mystique is his. She will not touch her.

“No worries, Lehnsherr,” Emma says nonchalantly, as if his threats can just slide off her. “I won’t mess with your precious baby. Between you, Mystique and Charles, this is one entirely fucked up situation.”

The people who have been holding Hank down stand up and they hoist him as a group then carry him to the makeshift infirmary. He will stay there, sedated, until they can wake him without risk that he’ll try to kill someone. The rest of the crowd starts to dissipate, returning to their daily tasks, and just like that the show is over. To them Hank is a crazed mutant, driven insane by days in the snow, dehydration, starvation. Any of those things can make someone scream until they have no voice left and fight the demons in their head. They have no idea of that there is truth in Hank’s words.

Raven walks towards Erik, her form blue and lithe, her face troubled and she comes to stand next to him.

“Get me out of here,” she says to Erik, her tone serious and her hands trembling. They are both shaken to the core. He nods. Get her out of here before she loses it.

They walk together towards the edge of the compound that lies on the lake, which is still covered in ice with areas starting to thin with the slightly warmer weather of spring. The noises of the compound fade as they make their way along the lake’s edge, fir trees towering above them, a bird rising from the undergrowth from time to time, disturbed by the way their feet crack across branches on the path they follow. As the compound slips further behind them the entire works feels strangely quiet. Mystique says nothing for a long time, just walks next to Erik, lost in thought.

“It’s strange that it’s just the two of us left.” she says quietly, her voice breaking the silence as they come to a bit of a clearing.

The two of them. Alone together in the world. At least that’s what Mystique thinks. Erik hears Hank’s voice in his head. They killed them all. Then Emma. Except one. One they took for themselves. Charles.

“Charles! He’s alive, Raven.” Erik chokes out. She looks at him with those yellow eyes, surprised to hear Erik use her human name, her face shocked and relieved at the same time to hear what Emma had told Erik.

“How…?”

“Emma. I think she read Hank’s thoughts, saw what happened at the mansion. Hank thinks Charles is dead, but he’s not. Stryker has him. They killed everyone, took Charles and burned Westchester.”

Her home. Their home, really. Erik can’t lie to himself about this fact any longer. It’s the closest thing to a home he’s ever had. Burned to the ground. A stinking, smoking ruin. All because of Erik. Mystique starts to shake as they stand together, her whole body shuddering. It’s then that the tears finally come, standing in a clearing still blanketed with snow, the cold biting at both of them. It’s just the two of them, the two people who love Charles Xavier more than anyone else in the world, the two people who know him inside out. There are no prying eyes. There is no need to be strong. Erik understands love and how weak it makes you. He knows the need to reject it in front of the world. They are warriors and warriors have no room for love. He knows all of this as Mystique steps towards him, into his arms that have come up to wrap around her shoulders and pull her tightly against his body. He knows as he whispers soothing things against her forehead.

These are their burdens. At least today they can bear them together.

“Why didn’t he listen to you?” Mystique sobs into Erik’s chest. “Why? He would be safe. He would be with us.”

He wouldn’t be held somewhere, most likely tortured, reduced down to his most common denominator. Still alive, heart beating, neurons synapsing enough to feel the pain. Lab rat.

The question Mystique should be asking, the one that sit between them unspoken, is why didn’t Erik listen. He knew taking those children to Charles was a risk. Emma had told him as much. But seeing Charles again, having a reason to have that one last moment, if he was honest with himself, the temptation was too much and he’d given into it.

We all have our weaknesses.

They hold onto each other, holding each other up. Erik feels a tear run down his cheek.

"I will not survive this," Erik whispers into her red hair.

"You must," Mystique answers, her voice muffled against his chest. Erik knows she's right. Charles is alive and as long as he's alive, he must be rescued. Mystique cannot go. She has a rag tag community that looks to her for leadership. She has become the leader she was always destined to be, the person she could never be as long as she remained in Charles' shadow. She is needed.

No one needs Erik. Not here at least. Not even the mostly defunct Brotherhood, whose other half spends most of her time wandering around the compound, smoking and glaring at Erik, doesn't need him. But Charles does.

"I'll leave in the morning." Erik says. He is going to get Charles. He's going to bring him home. Not to Westchester. That home doesn't exist anymore. Home to him and Raven.

He ends up staying for a few more days. Mystique tells hims he should talk to Hank before he goes, who is still sedated in the infirmary, and they are going to need the skills of Magneto the metal bender when he wakes up. Erik sits by his bedside, watching the rise and fall of his chest. The medicine they practice in the wilderness is a far cry from the comforts of a modern hospital, but they somehow get medical supplies, fluids, antibiotics. The bruise on his face is yellow instead of the huge bloom of purple that had bloomed across his cheek when he first arrived. The swelling around his eye has started to recceed. The drugs stolen from a pharmacy somewhere in British Columbia keep him comfortable. He looks so young. Erik tells Hank that he’s sorry. Words he’ll never say to him when he’s awake.

When a scouting party bearing a load of abandoned railroad ties arrives, Erik forms them into metal restraints, wrapping them around Hank’s wrists and ankles, never tiring of the way manipulating metal makes his whole body hum. Then they wake up Hank.

Mystique is there, stroking Hank’s shoulder with one hand, her eyes soft and so full of pain that Erik wants to look away. It’s just the two of them, although Erik had seen Emma leaning against the wall of one of the buildings, watching him through narrowed eyes as he and Mystique walked towards the infirmary, and he can’t guarantee that she isn’t a silent observer in the room. Emma has few boundaries when it comes to her telepathy and endless curiosity.

It doesn’t take long after they turn off the drip that has kept Hank sedated for his eyelids to start fluttering. He opens them slowly, gazing up at Mystique, who is hovering above him, and he looks confused for a moment and then gives her a small smile.

“Raven,”

His voice is hoarse from disuse and his eyes are wide as he stares at Mystique. There are tears on her face. And his.

“Hank,” she says, her hand taking his, their fingers intertwining, . His eyes roam around the room and his brow knits in confusion, then he sees Erik.

Erik stands by the doorway, his hands slightly extended towards Hank as he tightens his control of the metal that holds him. The room is lit dimly by a makeshift lantern, a fireball made by a mutant floating in a jar, and it leaves the area by the doorway in shadows. Erik prefers to stay here, hiding, letting the darkness disguise him as he keeps the metal wrapped around Hank’s wrists and ankles. He will not let the situation get out of control again. Not for his sake and not for Raven’s.

“You,” Hank growls and his face goes from confused to angry in a split second and he tries to surge towards Erik but then realizes that he’s being held back by the railroad ties. His whole body convulses and he struggles against the metal, gnashing his teeth, snarling, and the blue starts to vein through his skin as Hank becomes something no-longer human appearing.

“You killed him!” Hank roars and Mystique rushes forward and places a hand on Hank’s bare shoulder and he jumps at her touch and turns to look at her.

“Raven!” Her human name is wrenched from him, tinged with pain. Hank doesn’t know Mystique. He only knows Raven Darkholme. “Magneto. He killed him.”

“He’s not dead, Hank.” she says forcefully, “listen to me. Charles isn’t dead.”

Hank is now fully blue and panting with exertion, but he’s no longer yelling, no longer trying to get to Erik. Erik still keeps a firm control of the metal shackles. Hank stares at Mystique like he can’t quite comprehend what she’s saying.

“Not dead?” he asks. “But...I saw them kill him.”

“We think they shot him with a tranquilizer, but Emma has picked through your memories and she says he’s not dead.”

“Emma Frost?” Hank says, as if he’s experiencing some sort of third dimension. “She’s helping you?”

“It’s a new world order,” Erik says, stepping forward into the light of the room. Hank glares at him then spits in his direction.

“You have no right Lehnsherr.” Hank hisses. No more Magneto. Erik feels his body relax a little. Hank turns to Mystique. “Why? Why did they take him and not kill him? They killed everyone else, Raven. The children. One by one, line up in the library. I watched from the hallway. They didn’t know I was there. Then I saw Charles, on the floor, bound hand and foot. Then there was his voice in my head. It was weak, almost a whisper, so much weaker than he usually is, and he told me to run and to find you. To go to the lake. To La Vérendrye. The last thing I saw was the gun raising and....and…..”

Hank chokes on a sob. He looks at Mystique and then at Erik, and the rage has softened into something else. Sorrow, fear, grief.

“Why?” Hank asks.

“Because they knew who he is,” a voice says from the doorway. All eyes turn to the newcomer. Emma. She’s standing with her thumbs hooked into the pockets of her pants, a sneer on her face, "he’s more useful to them alive than dead. He’s the ultimate subject for their experiments."

Lab rat. The most powerful psychic in the world is their lab rat. Erik squeezes his eyes shut.

“Emma,” Mystique says coolly, “no one invited you.”

“No,” Emma says, her voice smooth, “but this is the blind leading the blind here. You and lover boy here are too wrapped up in Xavier to make any sort of reasonable decision. You need me, sugar, so I thought I’d invite myself for the sake of all mutant-kind.”

Mystique glares. Hank looks puzzled at this exchange.

“And why do you care, Emma.” Erik asks dryly, "Except your never ending need to meddle?"

"Really Lehnsherr. Xavier has done a number on you if you can't see the obvious. Charles Xavier is the most powerful psychic in the world. I'm good but I'm no more than a tarot card reader next to him. If they crack him, learn how to use him, every psychic is as good as dead. And maybe every mutant. They didn't spare him to study him. They spared him to use him."

Erik goes cold.

"You two might want him back for whatever personal reasons you have," Emma continues, cocking an eyebrow in Erik's direction, offering him a small, knowing smile, “but the reality is that mutant-kind may be facing it's most serious threat yet and I'm all about self preservation. I don't want to die. At least not at the hands of you precious Charles and those who would twist his power and use it to destroy us."

"But we're safe here." Mystique says. The compound by the lake, the mutant utopia that she has built to keep their people safe. Emma laughs dryly.

"Silly little girl. You actually think Xavier couldn't take every single person here put with a mere thought? Like I said, you and lover boy are way too close to see any of this clearly." Emma looks at Erik now, and he feels her gaze pierce through him . "We leave tonight. I packed and one of the teleporters will drop us off somewhere in Montreal."

"You're coming with me?" Erik says stupidly, stating the obvious. Emma rolls her eyes.

"All of this is too domestic for me, Lehnsherr. I’ve been in this place way too long and I'm crawling out if my skin. I was made for the fight, you need help and we make a decent team. Plus I have one thing that neither of you do.”

“What is that, Emma?” Mystique asks, her tone cold.

“I actually know where Xavier is.”

Point taken.

They leave a couple hours later, Mystique taking Erik’s hand and telling him to bring Charles home. Emma standing a few feet away, shifting her weight impatiently from foot to foot.

“Be safe.” Mystique says.

“Take care of Hank,” Erik answers.

Then they are gone.

Erik still hates teleporting. It’s no better than it is with Azazal. Maybe worse because this mutant, who goes by the ridiculous moniker of Portal, isn’t nearly as good as the Russian and Erik finds that he’s concerned they might end up stuck in a wall or popping into the middle of a debate in parliament. Luckily they get pretty close his preferred destination of an alleyway in Montreal, stinking of rotting food and rat feces. Erik wrinkles his nose in disgust. Emma looks around in all directions then declares they are clear. No one has seen them appear like magic in the middle of the night. Emma pats the pockets of her familiar military jacket and pulls out her cigarettes. Some things never change. They stride out to the street that’s lit by flickering lamps that cut through the darkness. About fifteen minutes later, Emma has mind-wiped some random guy stumbling out of a nearby bar into giving her his car keys and they’re on their way back to the states. On their way to find Charles.

“I assume you have some idea of where we’re going.” Erik says into the silence that sits between them. Emma looks at him like he’s stupid.

“Of course. What do you think I’ve been doing with my time? Making snowmen and coming up with recipes that utilize regional wild berries? I’ve gone over Hank’s memories with a fine tooth comb. He’s at a military base in Oregon. One of the soldiers who attacked the school mentioned it. Hank is too traumatized to remember all the details accurately, but I picked everything apart until I figured it out.”

Erik gives Emma an admiring look.

“I hope no one ever underestimates you, Frost.”

They takes shifts, switching off every four hours, Erik driving, Emma sleeping in the back seat, Emma driving while Erik tries to sleep. It’s like old times and Erik finds his feelings of nostalgia for a road trip with Emma Frost slightly amusing. If they don’t stop it’s 42 hours to the place in Oregon, a place called Alkali Lake. They eat in diners, hunched over the table furthest from the door, Erik paying with the wad of cash Mystique had shoved into his hand as he left. Emma has a healthy appetite, and she tells Erik he should eat. He tells Emma to mind her own fucking business. He isn’t hungry, drinking cup after cup of black coffee until he feels like everything is wound up and a little too jittery.

When Emma drives and Erik can’t sleep, he leans against the door of the back seat, looking out the window as the landscape flashes by. They go through mountains, forests, winding roads that travel lazily through rolling hills. They see plains, miles of unending wheat fields. Rivers that rush alongside the highway. Erik thinks about Charles, but not too much. Too much hurts. He just knows that he's going to find him and bring him home. It's the least he can do.

The trip ends up taking three days even with driving almost constantly. They take the back roads to avoid detection and they have to stop for both of them to sleep a couple times, and Emma insists on switching cars once they cross the border back into the states, not wanting to attract attention with Canadian plates. By the time they reach the rolling Southern Oregon deserts near the compound Erik is feeling anxious and jumpy. They end up parked on a bluff above the lake, Emma sitting on the hood of their dirt-covered car , staring out over the dry landscape that stretches for miles in all directions. It's evening and the light is soft and filtered. There are patches of snow leftover from the dwindling winter here and there and occasional croppings of bull-pines. A stiff wind gusts, blowing up an occasional cloud of dust.

"Can you feel him?" Erik asks.

Emma doesn't answer right away. She stares out over the horizon then her brow furrows in a rare display of frustration.

"Fucking blockers," Emma mutters. "I'm sensing nothing. Even if I couldn't sense him specifically, I would feel someone. I'm getting nothing."

Fuck.

"We'll have to fight without your powers," Erik says, unable to hide the disappointment in his voice. Emma glares at him.

"I still have my diamond form, Erik. I'm not entirely useless. I just can't put everyone to sleep and wipe their minds. You might have to get some blood your hands this time."

They have Charles. They are torturing Charles. There will never be enough lives to pay for what has been done, what has been taken.

"It won't be a problem," Erik says tightly.

Lucky for them it's impossible that any human has built a modern day structure without using metal. And even with their blocker technology, just like Bethesda, they will not hold back the mighty Magneto. And once Erik has broken down their doors, busted through their walls and Charles is safe in his arms, he will bring down the entire underground installation with just a twist of his hand. Humans be damned. Their lives are nothing to him. He silently apologizes to Charles because there will be no mercy. Not this time.

"Try to get some sleep, Lehnsherr." Emma says softly as they both watch the sun slip below the horizon and the darkness starts to creep turning everything into tones of gray.

Erik stretches out in the back seat, his jacket folded under his head, but he can't close his eyes. He’s so close to Charles and it makes his whole body feel tightly wound, like he’s going to snap. Emma sits in the front seat, chain smoking, clearly not following her own advice. They are far away from a town, and only the noise of an occasional car rushing by on the nearby highway disturbs the silence. A coyote yips in the distance, out for the nightly hunt. Emma sighs as she blows out cigarette smoke. Erik shifts a little and grunts, trying to get comfortable, trying to calm his mind enough to get some sleep.

“You love him.” Emma says, her voice cutting into the silence. She is still turned away from him and Erik startles at her words.

“None of your fucking business, Emma,” Erik growls from the back seat.

“It has to be love because I can’t see you putting up with an idiot like Xavier unless you loved him. Plus you're a bit of an easy read Lehnsherr. You broadcast so loudly around Charles it's hard to ignore. It just took me a bit to figure it all out because, you know, it's a bit..." Emma pauses as if searching for the right word, "unusual."

Unusual. Erik can think of a few other words people tend to use when describing men who fuck each other and fall in love. Unusual isn't one of them. How kind of Emma to describe him and Charles as usual.

Erik doesn’t answer. At least not right away. He’s thinking about Charles. Charles who has always seen the best of him even when Erik was entirely blind to that side of himself. Charles who calls him ‘friend’ with such warmth in his voice, warmth like Erik has never known in his entire life. Until Charles, all he knew was cold, pain, deprivation. Does he love Charles? He can’t breathe without him, and if they attack the Alkali Lake compound tomorrow and Charles is gone, or if he’s been tortured to the point that he’s no longer himself, or if he’s dead, Erik will not be able to hold back his grief and anger. He will destroy everything he can get his hands on and humanity will truly know the power of mutant-kind once and for all.

“Yes,” Erik says quietly and Emma jerks a little, as if she’d finally started to drift to sleep.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, I love him.”

“Oh.” Emma says, as if she finds hearing the truth out loud more surprising than she’d expected. Then after a bit, she speaks again. “We’ll get him tomorrow Erik. We’ll get him.”

When the morning sun shines through the back window of the car, Erik finds himself waking up and realizes that despite the whirling thoughts in his head and his jumpiness, he actually managed to fall asleep. Emma is sitting in the front seat, ripping open a package of Hoho’s and she turns and hands him one.

“Breakfast,” she smiles and it's strangely kind. Emma doles out her kindness in such small amounts that when he encounters it he never fails to be surprised. Erik takes a bite and sweetness spreads over his tongue along with fake chocolate flavor, and the whole thing repulses him, but he makes himself chew and swallow it. Partly out of politeness and partly because he knows having low blood sugar isn’t going to help anyone.

They will scout today, get a lay of the land, find the entrances and exits to the underground bunker that houses the military base. Then tonight, under the cover of darkness they will attack. Emma throws some sand-colored camouflage pants and jacket at him and Erik can’t hide his surprise at how prepared Emma is.

“I thought you said you’d never underestimate me, Lehnhserr." Emma grins and she's almost ebullient, "I grabbed them - well, stole them - when we stopped in North Dakota. Put them on so we can stay hidden the best we can. I can’t shield us because of the blockers. And I promise not to peek while you change. Like I told your boyfriend, I know what’s mine and what isn’t.”

Erik rolls his eyes.

They pack their pockets full of chocolate bars and beef jerky, fill up a canteen with water and head out to look around. The landscape is less forgiving than La Vérendrye, with lots of open space and little underbrush. Erik can see why someone would want to place a secret military base here. You can see someone coming for miles. They run and crawl, systematically making a zigzag path over the terrain, looking for a way in, and eventually they find what they are looking for.

When they get back to the car, Emma grabs a bag that held hamburgers they purchased somewhere in Nevada and sketches out a quick map. Three entrances. All of them well-hidden. An air duct vent as well. All of it only obvious if you knew what to look for. They still have no idea how many people will be inside. No matter, they’re all going to be dead anyways.

They slouch in the car as the sun goes down, sitting in the front seat, Emma with her boots up on the dash. They’ve changed, both wearing black, and Emma hands Erik a pot of grease paint. He rubs it around his face until just his eyes are shining white. Emma smears it around her face as well then smiles, her teeth brilliant.

“it won’t make a difference once I’m in diamond form, but that’ll be once we’re inside. I dont want the moonlight to give me away, so I’ll stay like this during our approach. Plus, I tend to glow.”

Erik arches his eyebrows. “Glow? Seriously?”

Emma nods and Erik thinks she’s blushing.

Emma tucks her hair into a black wool hat and they wait. Time seems so slow, and it’s like the night before, quiet. Eerily quiet, not even their coyote friend is around to keep them company. Then Emma glances at her watch, looks over at Erik and nods.

“time to go.”

Erik takes a deep breathe.

_Charles. I’m coming._

They make their way down the bluff then run across the flat terrain as fast as they can until they come to a low hill and crouch in its shadow. First leg done. The entrance is another 500 yards. Emma nods at Erik, telling him to go ahead of her, so he runs to a cluster of bull pines and flattens himself against one of their trunks, careful to stay in their shadows. Emma is by his side seconds later. The last leg awaits. Erik nods at Emma, gesturing for her to go first this time. She runs without looking back and he follows right behind until they reach another small hill, this one with a large rock at it’s base. Just behind the rock is one of the doors. Emma looks around then gives Erik a thumbs up indicating all is clear. Erik moves to the door, placing his hands on the metal, and it starts to vibrate under his touch. With one swift motion he pulls it off its hinges and throws it, crumpled like a piece of paper, to the ground. They peer inside down a long corridor that slopes downward and from somewhere deep inside a siren wails softly.

There is no turning back now.

Emma shifts to diamond form and Erik thinks for a moment that she’s right, she does indeed glow. Then they start walking down the corridor, side by side, their eyes scanning for the enemy. Erik has a hand upraised, waiting for whoever might get in his way. For what seems like an eternity they are alone, and maybe Emma was wrong. Maybe this is a deserted facility and Charles has been moved, or it’s a trick. Erik feels sick, but then men with guns appear in front of them, kneeling down and the bullets start to fly.

Humans, Erik thinks to himself, always so self-important with their weapons of destruction. With a flick of his raised hand the bullets deflect, flying every which way into the walls, floor and ceiling of the corridor, and then the soldiers guns levitate from their hands, swivel and they all die with a deafening crack that echoes down the long corridor as Erik pulls all the triggers at once. Erik and Emma step over the bodies.

_Charles. I'm coming._

They reach an elevator and Erik pulls it too them, smirking at the idea that the humans think they can lock it down and keep themselves safe. Not when they use giant metal boxes to move around. He and Emma step inside. It’s easy to figure out where to go. The elevator apparently has one destination.

_Charles._

The emergency siren is louder as they sink further under the ground, wailing, and it will be the last sound the humans hear. The call that heralds their death.

_I’m coming._

They’re met with more soldiers when the elevator stops, and before the doors slide open, Erik looks darkly at Emma and mutters to her.

“I’m going to need one of them.”

Emma nods.

The doors slide open and there are rows and rows of men greeting them, and for what feels like a long moment everything is still. Erik looks at them, pathetic, thinking they can stop him. They look at him from behind dark shields that cover their faces, keeping Erik and Emma from seeing their fear. Emma shifts next to him, almost imperceptibly, her whole body thrumming with tension. The siren wails, filing Erik’s head with sound, a soundtrack for this moment of his life.

A man in the back shouts ‘FIRE!’ and Erik glances at Emma, who nods again. That’s the one he wants.

The entire world is filled with sound and Erik smiles, no grins, as he puts his hand up and again the bullets stop in midair, but this time they don’t fly around the corridor. They just drop with a loud clatter. The Erik reaches out to each soldier in front of him, tosses their weapons to the ground, then searches for the iron in their blood and one by one, screaming, begging, they drop. There is only one left, the one who appeared to be in charge, giving commands, and Emma is striding towards him as Erik finishes destroying the humans. She grabs him, pins him by his throat against the wall.

“The psychic,” Emma hisses. “Where is he.”

The man spits at Emma and it lands on her cheek.

“Fucking mutant.”

Erik comes to stand next to Emma. He regards the man cooly, looks at the slight tremor in his hand. He’s scared. Erik can tell.

“I don’t think you understand,” Erik says softly, reaching up to pull up the dark shield that obscures the man’s face, looking into his eyes. “You’re going to die. Tell us where the telepath is…tell us...”

Erik falters. Charles. Tell me where Charles is. He is shaking with rage. Emma puts a hand on his arm to still him.

“...tell us where he is and I’ll let Emma snap your neck, making it quick and painless. Don’t tell us where he is and I’ll draw every molecule of iron out of your blood slowly and you will beg for death.”

Emma nods, her mouth twisting it an ironic little smile, “he’s not kidding, sugar. I’d listen to the mutant if I were you. Tell us where the telepath is.”

“Fuck you,” the soldier hisses. Erik raises a hand. If this man won’t tell them, they will knock down every door they find until one of them contains Charles. He feels the iron in his blood and starts pulling on it, tugging, letting it sing to him. The man screams, an inhuman sound, and then he begs.

“Please, please, please. STOP. The lab. He’s in the lab. down the hallway, to the left. Just stop.”

Emma snaps his neck and the soldier slumps down the wall. Erik is a man of his word. He did not make the suffering any longer than necessary.

They turn and head towards the lab. Towards Charles. More bodies to stop over, and whole place seems eerily deserted, the wail of the emergency siren still echoing but there are no more soldiers with guns. Maybe they have all run away. Maybe they made the strategic mistake of sending all their soldiers against them and there is no one left to fight. There still must be scientists, because where there are lab rats, there are people who will poke them, prod them, hurt them in the name of discovery. Erik knows this.

They reach the lab. Erik pauses outside the sliding metal door, his heart in his throat, and Emma glances at him.

“It’s going to be okay,” she says quietly. “whatever we find on the other side of that door, it will be okay.”

Erik doesn’t know what they will find. Charles. Maybe nothing. Alive. Dead. Barely alive. Suddenly his chest clenches tightly. The rage that’s been fueling him fades into the background. He’s scared, because no matter how much he hates the term, Erik is so deeply human. He’s flawed, and he loves Charles.

Everybody has their weakness.

Emma is pushing at the entry keypad with so success. She looks at Erik.

“I need you, Magneto.” she says, sounding irritable, the moment of kindness and understanding gone and the Emma he knows and needs right now is back in place, “Snap out of it.”

Erik does. He steps forward and peels back the door like opening a can of sardines. The bright, white light of a lab shines out into the dimly lit hallway and partly blocking it is the towering figure of a woman holding a gun. She has long, dark hair and is wearing a lab coat. Erik quickly glances at the government issue name badge that is dangling from one of the coat’s pockets.

Anne.

In a way Erik is glad to have the name of one of Charles’ tormentors. Anne. A scientist. Working for what she thinks is right. Emma and Erik stare at her and she stares back. There is no fear in her eyes, just hatred.

“Stay out of my lab,” Anne hisses and in that moment she pulls the trigger, and she is so close to them that Erik can’t stop that small piece of metal quickly enough and it flies the short distance between them, and hits Emma. This is just luck of the draw for Erik because the bullet just glances off her diamond form and Emma smiles.

“Nice try, sweetheart,” she quips and Erik raises a hand and squeezes his fist, crumpling her gun. At the same time Emma moves forward and grabs Anne’s arms, pulling them behind her back until Anne grunts in pain. Erik runs into the lab.

_Charles._

Erik can’t quite comprehend what he’s seeing.

He’s there. Charles is stretched out on a stainless steel table, and the first thought in Erik’s head is that he must be so cold. Charles hates the cold. He makes the staff light fires in whatever room he’s in and bundles himself in cardigan sweaters. He drinks cup after cup of hot tea even in the summer. Now he’s lying on this cold table and all Erik wants to do is find a way to warm him.

His limbs are in restraints, holding him spread-eagle on that cold table and his head is covered in electrodes, wires everywhere. There are IVs in his arms and pumps with bottles of who knows what hanging from machines next to the table. One whole side of the room is a computer - wheels turning, lights flashing, and it makes a soft whirring sound in the room. The wires travel up from Charles, across the ceiling and into the machine.

Erik opens his mouth, wants to scream, but nothing comes out. Nothing at all. Charles’ eyes are closed and he’s draped in a thin hospital gown, and he looks so thin. Finally Erik manages to squeak out his name.

“Charles.”

Charles eyes fly open and he looks panicked for a moment, his eyes casting around the room, then they find Erik and Charles stares at him, just stares for the longest time. Then the strangest thing happens. In the middle of all this hurt and pain, Charles smiles. He fucking SMILES.

“Erik?” Charles says, his voice hoarse, “is that really you?”

Hearing Charles voice loosens everything that Erik has been holding back for months now and he rushes to Charles, grabs his hand, and Erik is sobbing.

“Yes.”

“Good,” Charles sighs, “I thought it was another of those dreams.” then his eyes flutter shut.

“CHARLES!” Erik yells, his hands going to those thin jutting shoulders, shaking them. His mind is spinning. What should he do? Pulse. Find his pulse. Quick. Erik’s fingers fumble to the base of Charles throat, and it’s there. Thin, weak, but it’s there. Barely.

“Emma!” Erik barks. She’s busy with the scientist, who she has managed to hog tie and lean against one of the white walls of the lab, but at the sound of Erik’s voice, she turns.

“He’s in bad shape. We need to get him out of here.” Erik says as he uses his powers to pull off the restraints. He is yanks the electrodes out of Charles hair. “We need Azazel.”

There is only one teleporter who can do this, one strong enough, which means they must again rely on whether or not the Russian will cooperate. Emma frowns.

“The blockers,” she says, “And even if I could use my telepathy, he’s in New York. My range...”

“Figure it out, Frost,” Erik snaps. “We need to get him back to the compound.”

Emma nods then turns back to Anne and slaps her hard across the face.

“The blocker, bitch,” Emma hisses, “Where is it.”

Anne spits out that she’ll never tell a stinking inhuman mutant anything, but she makes a strategic mistake by glancing to her left just before that filth spews from her mouth and Emma’s and Erik’s eyes follow the direction she’s looking. In the other corner of the lab is a machine they don’t recognize. Emma nods at Erik who is holding Charles cradled in his arms. With a quick nod, he crumples it and sparks start flying out of it. Emma gets a far away look in her eyes as she tries to reach out with her telepathy then nods at Erik.

“Now,” she says, “let’s hope he’s not too drunk.”

Emma starts to concentrate, and it’s rare that Erik actually sees Emma strain to use her powers. She downplays how strong of a telepath she is, and she might not be Charles, but she’s no lightweight either. She crouches down, resting her arms on her knees, and she starts to shake.

“Emma?” Erik says, worried. Worried for her. Worried for Charles. They will not be able to drive Charles back to La Vérendrye. It’s too far away and he needs medical attention right away. She glances up at him and waves him off with a hand, and Erik finds it amusing that Emma Frost has grown on him to the degree that he’s actually worried for her safety. Emma’s eyes are closed and she startle a little and lets out a small cry of pain. Then she opens her eyes and looks at Erik.

“I found him in a bit of a compromising position, but he’s on his way.”

Moments later Azazel appears in the room in the middle of buttoning his shirt, looking vaguely annoyed. Fucking show off. He looks at Emma, who has shifted out of her diamond form now that she can use her powers, then to Erik holding Charles limp form cradled in his arms.

“You owe me, Lehnsherr,” Azazel says in his thick accent. Of course. Never mind that saving Charles will possibly save mutant-kind. Erik glances down at Charles, who is taking these awful, shallow breathes, and he doesn’t care how much he owes Azazel. He’ll put up with the Russian pain in the ass for the rest of his life if he can get them back home, back to safety.

“What about the woman?” Emma asks.

Erik thinks. This is one of the people who has hurt Charles, has made him into a lab rat in the same way Shaw made Erik a lab rat. There is no way painful enough for her to die, and even then, her pain will never be enough to make any of this right. Erik squeezes his eyes shut. He knows what Charles would say. He would say she deserves some measure of compassion, that no one is truly a monster. Erik decides he will compromise. She cannot live. But she does not have to die painfully.

“Snap her neck,” Erik says to Emma. He looks at Anne who is staring at him with hatred. “This is for Charles. For what you’ve done to him, and for the children, for everyone you have ever hurt. You will know pay with your life, and with the knowledge that the mutants you hate so much have won, and we will keep winning until your kind is wiped from the face of the earth.”

Anne glares at him.

“I will die for my cause, mutant,” she hisses.

"Yes, you will," Erik answers.

Erik takes a breath. Emma looks at him and he gives her a nod, then she takes her hands, places them on either side of Anne’s face and twists. The scientists’ head hangs down limply.

“Now,” Erik says to Azazel. “Take us home. Quickly.”

~TBC~


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erik almost loses Charles and he choses love over everything else. Emma gives him a gift. Things get worse in the south.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you have been reading this wondering if it really should be Erik/Emma, and yeah, Erik loves Charles, but WHERE IS THE CHERIK????, well, here it is. A whole chapter of (mostly) fluffy Cherik, with a sprinkle of humor. And some sex. Just in case you were reading along, wondering WHERE IS THE SEX????. Here be the sex.

Erik knows peace again.

The night they appear in the middle of the compound Erik yells for help and people start to run from the buildings that surround the compound’s central square. Erik sinks to the ground, holding Charles in his arms, watching the way his chest hitches, and it’s only Mystique who can convince him to let him go. Hank is there, his hand touching Erik lightly on the arm, thanking him, then he's taking Charles from Erik and barking orders at someone about fluids and blankets.

For the next two weeks Charles lies in the infirmary, connected to tubes, a monitor lifted from a hospital showing the rhythm of his heart running across the screen. Erik will not leave his side. He sits on a hard metal chair, day and night, barely sleeping, and he hears Mystique tell the people who staff the infirmary to let him be. She brings him tea and soup, and she spoons them into his mouth, telling him he’s no good to Charles if he doesn't keep up his strength. She takes care of him so he can stay with Charles. She knows this is what Erik needs right now.

Erik can’t stop watching Charles, memorizing his face, watching his chest rise up and down, the slight twitch of his fingers as his body is forced to sleep with drugs. He is thin, bones jutting out in all kinds of different places, and when they turn him Erik can count his vertebrae, can see his ribs, and every time it brings tears to his eyes.

“He’s strong,” Mystique says quietly, her hand on his shoulder. She has obligations, but still she comes and stands with him, staring at Charles, as if the presence of both of them at his bedside can change things.

Charles IS strong. His body is young and he was able to take a lot from his captors. His spirit is tenacious. He is extraordinary and he will be okay. Charles Xavier is meant to live. Erik knows this with an unswerving conviction.

Erik knows peace again.

Recovery is a process, two step forwards, one step back, and slowly Charles makes that journey. They wake him up, stopping the sedation, and Erik makes sure that his face is the first he sees. Charles eyes blink open and they are filled with fear at first, then he turns his head and sees Erik, and smiles. The same smile he’d given him in the lab and Erik feels joy spread slowly from his heart all the way out to his fingertips.

“You’re safe,” Erik says, taking Charles’ hand in his.

Everyone in the room descends on Charles at once, and Mystique is hugging him, Hank patting his shoulder and telling him he thought he’d lost him, one of the medical staff is putting a blood pressure cuff around his arm, and the entire time Charles grips Erik’s hand as if it’s the only thing that keeps him anchored. Erik will not let him go.

Once he’s awake, Charles is moved out of the infirmary. There’s a late bout of the flu going through the kids in the camp and they need to have the space for hydration. A couple mutants came in injured after a gunfight with the police in a town they were raiding. Charles is doing very well. There is no reason for him to stay any longer. Charles can’t stop shaking when Erik tells him he’ll be leaving because it’s the only place he feels safe. Erik tells him that as long as they’re together, Charles will always be safe.

Charles will have his own place. A small building on the outskirts of the compound that was probably once used for ice storage. It’s been used to store provisions but Mystique had it cleared out and fixed up for Charles. It’s small, private and perfect for him. She doesn’t want Charles to be in with the general population. Especially while he’s recovering.

“There’s room for both of you,” Mystique tells Erik. He nods, tears filling his eyes. For being the great Magneto, he has a hard time stemming the tears lately. He has so much to be grateful for.

“I love you, Raven.” Erik says quietly, using her human name. He’s one of the few allowed to use it. Hank and Charles being the other two. He takes her into his arms and holds her tightly, crushing her to his chest. “thank you.”

“You brought him back to me,” Raven mumbles against Erik’s chest. “And you both need time with each other. It's the least I can do."

Erik never leaves Charles’ side and Charles never complains. They move into the ice house, finding it swept out, clean, a rickety book shelf on one wall, two worn armchairs, a crate with a lamp on it. Along the other wall is a sleeping palate large enough for two. Erik’s things are stacked next to the makeshift bed. Erik looks around the room then looks at Mystique.

“It’s for both of you,” she explains. “it’s your place and your business. I just thought that Charles needs you right now.”

She’s right.

For the first couple weeks in the ice house, they don’t leave. Mystique brings food from the mess, and Charles gulps it down without complaint. They spend their days reading books, talking about nothing in particular, never touching on what’s happened or what they did to Charles. Charles sleeps in Erik’s arms every night, and despite this, every night he wakes screaming, clawing at Erik, begging someone only he can see to stop. Please make it stop. Erik holds Charles tightly and shushes in his hair, and rubs his back until the shaking subsides and Charles falls back to sleep. When he wakes in the morning it takes time for the haunted look to leave his eyes.

Emma visits. She appears one day in the doorway, her eyes narrowed and watching them, holding something square in her hands that’s wrapped in brown paper.

“Well, isn’t this cozy,” she drawls, looking from Erik to Charles then back to Erik. Charles stares at her, as if he’s not quite sure what to say or what to make of her. Erik smiles, because it’s Emma, and he’s grown fond of her.

“Come in.” Erik says and gestures to the worn armchairs. Emma slouches into one of them and flashes Charles a smile.

“Nice to see you conscious.” she says awkwardly.

“Thank you, Emma.” Charles responds sincerely. “I owe you my life.”

Emma snorts dismissively.

“We’re going to end up on opposite sides again someday, Xavier.” she says, turning the package she’s been holding around in her hands, “remember that you owe me then. Until then, forget about it. All in a day’s work.”

Erik would hug Emma but she’d probably punch him before he could. She’s not much of a hugger. Everything he owes her will go mostly unsaid.

“Anyways,” Emma says, standing up and tossing the package at Erik, whose hands come up to catch it. “Something for you two assholes. I’m moving on.”

As she’d told him before, Emma doesn’t do domesticity well. There is a power plant somewhere that need to be blown up, or something even more nefarious. Erik doesn’t ask.

“You know where to find me,” Erik says warmly.

“That I do, Lehnsherr.” she says, looking pointedly at Charles. “That I do. You know, it’s funny. I didn’t used to understand all of this. You and him. I do now. Have a good life, Erik. I’ll miss Magneto. Just a little bit.”

Against his better judgement, Erik decides to hug Emma after all, half expecting her to pull a knife on him, and he’s pleasantly surprised when she hugs him back. When she’s gone Charles turns to Erik and laughs.

“I never thought I’d be so fond of Emma Frost,” he says.

Erik smiles. Life has a way of surprising you at the package he's still holding then unwraps it and when he sees what it is he can't help but laugh. A small chess set.

Erik knows peace again.

They sit at the edge of the lake watching the sunset, stretched out in the rusted lawn furniture someone had found discarded by the side of the road and dragged back to the compound. It’s been three months since they returned. The snow has entirely melted and the days are getting warmer and longer. Charles has gained his weight back and if you saw him strolling through the compound, his head bent in conversation with Mystique, Erik always by his side, you would never know he’d been held and tortured to the very edge of dying. He's almost back to the same old Charles. Almost, but not quite.

He still wakes up screaming every night and Erik still soothes him back to sleep. He still has that haunted look in his eyes when he wakes. The nightmares never seem to get better.

“At the rate Raven feeds me, I’m going to get fat,” Charles laughs. He’s wearing fingerless gloves and cradling a mug of Mystique’s precious Earl Gray that he raids every now and then, entirely willing to face her chastising him because despite her angry words, she can’t help but deliver them with a small smile. “You wouldn’t believe what she brought me the other day. Smoked trout and EGGS. I guess the hens are starting to lay.”

"Amazing," Erik murmurs sincerely, a bit distracted by how much he might enjoy a plump Charles. “Chickens.”

It’s so like Charles to find delight in the boring functions of their little village. The hens some of the mutants have started to raise, the book club he’s managed to start up, and the days he spends teaching children as they sit in a circle around him in the middle of one of the nearby meadows. Erik loves each of these moments because they are so intensely mundane and boring that they have become beautiful. That’s what it feels like when you almost lose someone.

Erik will still not leave Charles’ side. Not for a moment, and if somehow Charles walks away with him knowing, there is such a deep panic inside that he feels he might not be able to breathe. He tells Charles this one night as they lie in their bed, pressed up against each other, huddled together for warmth against the still chilly nights. Their nights, their bed, have become Erik's confessional.

“They won’t take me again,” Charles says softly, stroking Erik’s hair, running his fingers through it. They are both looking shaggy, life in the wilderness taking root, and it’s not like there’s a barber somewhere nearby. Erik likes it. He likes the way Charles hair shines in the sunlight, the way it curls slightly around the nape of his neck, the way it feels between his fingers.

“You don’t know that,” Erik growls. The only way he can be sure is if he can be nearby at all times. He left Charles once before, left him vulnerable and he won’t do it again. Charles doesn’t answer. He just soothes his fingers over Erik’s brow and whispers that they have both been through too much, more than anyone should have to bear.

The lake is still and quiet, lit by the setting sun and somewhere in the distance some ducks land, disturbing the stillness as they splash into the water, calling to each other. Charles takes another sip of his tea then clears his throat.

“Erik?” he starts, sounding strangely hesitant.

“Yes,” Erik turns to look at Charles who is staring at him with those eyes and Erik sees something indefinable there. Charles shakes his head, his brow furrows slightly and he looks away.

“Why is this so hard?” he says, mostly to himself, and Erik doesn’t answer, because he doesn’t know what is hard and all he can do is wait for Charles to spit out what is bothering him. Erik reaches out and touches Charles arm.

“Whatever it is, Charles, you can tell me.”

Charles turns back to face him.

“Do you remember this first time you kissed me?” Charles asks. “It seems like a lifetime ago. God, I’ll never forget it. I had wanted you so badly and had no idea if you felt the same, and when you kissed me in that hotel room in Duluth, I thought maybe I’d died and gone to heaven.”

Erik nods. He will never forget.

“Is this what this is all about?” Erik asks softly, “a trip down memory lane?”

“Not really.” Charles says quietly, looking away. “It’s just that that all seemed so hard back then, but it was easy compared to this. So much easier. I just...I just don’t know how...”

“Charles…”

Erik feels his skin grow hot as he waits for Charles to finish his thought, and he replays that first kiss, the feeling of catharsis and how he had never wanted it to stop. A lifetime ago was right, and everything had felt so simple then. Before Cuba. Before ideology drove them apart. Before love wasn’t enough to keep them together. Erik’s hand is still on Charles’ arm and he starts to absently stroke up and down the sleeve of Charles’ wool cardigan that he wears perpetually to ward off the cold that isn’t always there, a ghost leftover from his captivity.

“It’s just that, Erik, it’s been so long, and I don’t even know how to ask anymore.”

“You can ask me anything. Anything at all.” Erik says softly. Whatever Charles asks, Erik will give.

Charles takes a deep shaking breath and his eyes lock with Erik’s. Then Erik feels Charles touch his mind, a soft fluttering that he imagines might be the same feeling of gossamer or butterfly wings. Erik holds still, not flinching, refusing to betray any discomfort he might have with this intrusion.

 _[Please.]_ Charles’ voice echoes in Erik’s head and it appears Charles cannot find a way to say whatever is bothering him out loud, and Erik does not shy away. He knows that if Charles is choosing to slide into Erik’s head, then whatever he wants to say, he needs to say this in this manner.

_[I want you to fuck me.]_

Oh.

Oh Charles.

Erik’s eyes slide shut, his mouth falls slack, his groin tightens and the hand that has been stroking Charles’ arm stills. His lips tingle and he feels a the sudden sharp ache of need.

Finally.

Erik opens his eyes to find Charles staring at him, his eyes tinged with fear. It takes every bit of will Erik has to keep his hands from reaching over and pulling Charles to him, into his arms, to crush his mouth to the other man’s and try to dull the ache that is coursing through him like a flash flood, destroying all ability of rational thought in its path.

They have not had sex since the night Charles stripped and gave his body to Erik because he could not find a way to tell him that he would not be joining him and seeking sanctuary in the north. It’s not because Erik doesn’t want Charles. Every cell in his body cries out for him, but Charles has been recovering, his body was frail and destroyed, and by the time he was stronger and better, Erik was almost afraid to do anything that might change the fragile balance they had struck. And Charles has never asked. Not until now. He nestled into Erik every night, burying his head in his shoulder, taking Erik’s hand in his, stretched out against him, and sometimes Erik could not stop his body from responding, and he lay there, cock hard against Charles’ ass, aching for release, and there was no way Charles didn’t know. He never moved, never initiated, and after all they had been through, after being held and tortured, and who knows what else they did to him, who knows which ways he’d been violated, Erik needed it to be Charles who gave him permission to restart that part of their relationship.

He’d grown used to the ache.

And now Charles is looking at him, asking him if he would touch him again, if he would use his body in that most intimate of ways, if he would make him feel pleasure again. From the look on his face, he's afraid the answer might be no.

“I don’t know if you still want to.” Charles says softly, his voice quavering a little “At first I didn’t want to, and now...it’s been so long and I’m not who I used to be. I’m different...I don’t even know if I can…but I want to. So badly. I miss you. I miss having you in that way so much.

Erik’s throat tightens. His cock has grown achingly hard so quickly he can barely stand the sensation.

“And Erik, my love, it’s okay if you say ‘no’. You’re already enough for me. Just like this.”

This pushes Erik over the edge.

“Shut the fuck up, Charles, you idiot,” Erik finally manages to growl, and he manages to let out a wry laugh, “You actually think I might not want you? If it did not result in a terrible public spectacle and cause all sorts of trouble for Mystique, I would rip off your clothes, push up your knees and fuck you right here and now until you screamed my name for everyone to hear. Do I still want you? I never stopped - will never stop.”

“Oh Erik!” Charles gasps and his eyes are shining with tears, Erik’s cheeks are wet and together they are a tangled, aching mess. Charles is laughing now, both with joy and relief and he’s saying Erik’s name over and over again, reaching to touch his face with his fingers. “I’ve missed you, my friend. So very much.”

Somehow they make it back to their cozy little hut. It takes a lot of effort because Erik is pretty sure he’s so incredibly aroused that he won’t be able to walk, so they sit by the edge of the lake until the sun has entirely slipped away and the whole world is dark. The stars start to flicker in the sky above them then the midnight blue is filled with them, and Erik remembers how much he’d wanted to share this beauty with Charles. Finally they stand up and make their way back to their one room house, arms wrapped around each other, concealed by darkness, and Erik is practically vibrating with anticipation.

_Finally._

When they are back to their room, and Erik sees that Firestorm has made her nightly rounds and left their lamp lit with a low flame, he turns to Charles and just looks at him. His eyes take in this man he loves so much, the one he’s been given a second chance with. Charles stands there, submitting himself to Erik’s hot gaze.

“I don’t even know where to start,” Erik whispers. There is no room for untruths here. He feels both unfamiliar with Charles, which is so ridiculous, and entirely overwhelmed at the same time.

“A kiss?” Charles asks, arching an eyebrow, giving him a small, cheeky smile, and how Erik has missed Charles cheekiness, “I’ve missed your lips.” He steps towards Erik and reaches up to wind his arms around Erik’s neck, then pulls Erik down, down until their lips meet.

_Charles._

Erik sobs against Charles’ mouth because kissing him, being kissed by him, is so incredibly good. Charles kisses him again, this time opening his mouth wider, and it’s wet and rough and urgent. Erik wants to stop this, to slow down, because he wants this moment to be slow and sweet, but prolonging any of this feels like agony and he is throbbing with want, a mass of contradictions. He starts pushing Charles back, step by step, backwards until they reach their makeshift mattress and tumble backwards, Charles on his back, Erik on his knees above him, still kissing him.

There might be words that could be said, maybe something about how much he wants Charles, maybe he could growl that he wants fuck Charles into the mattress, or tell him that he tastes to fucking good after all this time, but Erik can’t because he can’t stop sobbing between kisses, and as much as he’s aching with desire, he’s also filled with heartache for how much they’ve lost.

Charles hands are scrabbling to get his own clothes off, pulling at the scratchy wool of his cardigan, fingers trembling as they fumble with the buttons of his shirt, and Erik takes them in his hands in his own then kisses each once on the palm as Charles stares up at him. It’s a strangely still moment in the midsts of all the frenzy, then Erik is easing Charles out of his clothing, pulling off his shirt, slipping pants down his slim hips, throwing the items into a heap in the corner, and finally Charles is lying naked on their bed, stretched out, obviously aroused and watching Erik.

Erik’s eyes roam up and down the body that he once felt almost belonged to him. There are scars. Pink, raised welts, healing but scars that will leave a mark forever. His eyes fall on them and he wishes he could kill those people at Alkali Lake a hundred times over for what they’ve done. Charles looks away as Erik takes his fingers and traces along them.

“You have never looked away from mine.” Erik says softly. “Never once made me feel lesser.”

“I couldn’t stop them, couldn’t fight.” Charles whispers, and the tears are back, “I was so weak.”

Erik has had years to make sense of the torture he sustained. Charles has only had a few months. Instead of telling him that he was the victim, that he holds no responsibility, Erik leans down and starts to kiss each one, each pink line and welt and Charles arches his back and moans at the touch of his lips. Erik finds one of his nipples and pays it special attention nipping and sucking, and Charles starts to writhe.

“Too many clothes,” Charles gasps, “Good god, Erik, I need to feel you. Please.”

Erik pulls back and Charles shivers as the cool air hits his skin. Erik strips efficiently and notes with satisfaction that the front of his underwear is wet with precome, and he thinks that will help greatly with what they’re about to do. He returns to Charles, lowering his length gently onto the smaller man, supporting his weight with his forearms, afraid to rest himself completely down.

“All of you,” Charles grits out, his voice gravelly, and he uses a free hand to pull Erik down roughly, causing him to lose his balance and his full weight presses Charles into the bed. At the same time Charles' other free hand comes up to tangle in Erik’s hair, pulling his face down to his, lips meeting in a bruising kiss. Erik’s now available hands go to Charles' arms and push them upwards, causing his hands to lose their grip, then they slide up to his wrists, pinning them above Charles’ head. Where Charles had been kissing Erik before, now ERIK is in control, ravaging his mouth, almost growling into it. Charles manages to tear his mouth away and he hisses ‘yesssssss’ then nips at Erik’s shoulder just before Erik captures his mouth yet again, feeling Charles’ chest hitching against his as he struggles for breath.

Erik does not stop.

Charles does not want him to.

Everything he’s been holding back lets loose and Erik can’t get enough. Enough taste, enough feel, and his hips seem to have a mind of their own because they are grinding mercilessly against Charles, their cocks rubbing together, and they are just slick enough with precome to make it feel good. So good.

“Oh god, Erik,” Charles manages to gasp between kisses, and Erik knows this isn’t going to last long, “Please. I’m...I’m going to come. Just please, slower, or, oh god, just, I can't come yet, I need you to fuck me.”

Erik stills and Charles is panting under him.

“Please,” Charles says again.

Erik releases one of Charles hands, brings his own hand to his mouth and spits in it. Then he reaches down and swipes across the tip of his leaking cock, then across Charles, causing him to jump at the touch and moan a little. He takes his hand that is now slick with saliva and precome and spreads it along his cock. Charles is watching him, biting his full bottom lip in anticipation, his pupils wide and dark. He shifts his hips down the bed, down toward Erik’s cock, almost begging, and Erik takes Charles legs and pushes them up, up, until his ass is curved up and spread wide open. He looks down at Charles now, who has started to toss his head back and forth, muttering a litany of dirty words as he starts to beg. Erik scoots forward until he’s almost pressed right up against Charles’ delicious ass, he reaches down to position is aching, flushed cock and slowly, so very slowly, he pushes in.

“OH!” Charles gasps, as if this is all new, as if it’s something he never felt before, and Erik loves that sound more than almost anything in the entire world. It’s short and sharp and full of wonder.

They are still for a long moment, neither moving, just breathing together, and it’s this incredible moment of complete and utter perfection to feel Charles hot and tight around him again. He’s missed this so much. The sensation quickly builds until it’s almost unbearable and then as if on their own accord, Erik’s hips start to move. They rock at first, once, twice, but it isn’t enough, never enough, then they snap forward hard as Erik’s control quickly unravels, and there is nothing slow or sweet about this anymore. It’s rough, and Charles head is bouncing back with every thrust, his jaw slack, his hands holding onto Erik’s back as Erik’s balls slap against Charles ass, his cock seeking to be deeper, even deeper, always deeper.

It doesn’t take long for everything to fall apart, for Erik to lose his rhythm, for Charles’ moans to lose all sense and meaning, and Erik feels his stomach muscles tightening up, and he wants to slow down, to take a deep breath, to try to hold off, because this is all so good and so real, but he can’t because he also wants to come and craves the release. In the end his body wins and he lets out a deep, low groan and comes, pulsing over and over into Charles, and he’s sobbing Charles name. Then Charles is pulling him close and his hands are gliding up and down Erik’s sweat covered back and he’s whispering in his ear.

“I love you. Erik. Oh Erik, I love you so much. Forever.”

When Erik finally manages to pull out of Charles he looks down and sees that Charles is hard and almost crying because he needs release. There are so many ways this could be done. He could bend down and take Charles in his mouth, savoring the taste of him that he’d been denied for so long. He could flip them over and let Charles rut on top of him until he comes. Erik wants something different. He crawls up the bed to lie next to Charles, stretching out on his side the pulls Charles against him until his back is pressed against Erik’s front, his ass nestled against Erik’s hips and now spent cock and Erik’s hand comes around Charles waist and finds his flushed, hard cock that is pushed up against Charles’ belly and begging to be touched. Between Erik’s orgasm and the time it had taken to reposition, Charles is no longer on the edge of coming and this allows Erik to be able to take Charles into his hand and stroke him slowly, lazily, savoring the way he feels, listening to the small, mewling sounds Charles makes as he arches into Erik's touch. Erik pulls Charles closer and his lips rest by his ear and he whispers all his love and devotion as he leisurely brings Charles to the point of orgasm and finally he feels Charles tense up, push back against him and he comes hard, grunting out Erik’s name.

They are spent. Neither of them talk, they just lie wrapped around each other, breathing together, hearts slowing until they drift off to sleep, with Erik letting one last thought linger before his eyes close.

_Finally._

For the first time since the returned from Alkali Lake, Charles doesn’t have nightmares.

Erik knows peace again.

Everything will change soon. There are rumors coming in from the states in fits and starts. The nature of the people who want to destroy mutant-kind is that they will not give up, and the mutant-hatred is so pervasive, so strong, that it won’t be long before they get the leverage they need. Erik knows this, but he shoves it all into the back of his mind, because Charles is here, and now they are able to wake up together, legs intertwined, stinking from fucking all night, and it’s more than Erik has ever had before from the man who holds his heart. He cannot think about what might destroy all of this. He’s spent too much time already doing that, and almost losing Charles has made him understand that nothing is more important than the telepath. HIS telepath.

Slowly the fear starts to subside. Summer arrives and the days are long and hot. Children splash in the lake, Mystique comes to their little home with a basket full of blueberries that she and Hank had picked and tells Charles that she’s never seen him happier. Hank actually manages to smile at Erik and Erik sees him place a hand on the small of Mystique’s back. Small wonders.

Erik can let Charles go further now. He can let him go on hikes through the forests and meadows around them for hours and not be afraid that he’ll be gone forever. Charles says the solitude is good for his soul, that being in the compound, having all those voices around him and still not having his telepathy fully healed is hard on him. He can’t block them out in the he used to be able to. What remains unspoken is the question of whether or not Charles will ever be able to fully heal.

Maybe love isn’t a weakness, Erik realizes. Maybe it makes a person strong. Maybe it feeds their soul. He has spent so long hiding Charles, pretending that he doesn’t matter, but now that he has decided there is nothing more important in world than Charles he doesn’t feel weak at all. Maybe it’s okay for Mystique to sometimes look at Hank like he’s the only person on the planet and their eyes can meet across a dining hall and be filled with love, and she can still be the leader of their little world. It's starting to seem possible that loving someone won’t destroy either of them. Maybe Erik has been wrong all alone.

For the first time in his life, Erik understand that love is enough. It’s actually everything.

Charles tells Erik he’s getting soft.

“What would the Brotherhood say if they saw you? The great Magneto, the savior of mutant-kind, brought to his knees by one person.”

Erik waggles an eyebrow at Charles.

“I don’t think I really want them to see me on my knees.”

Charles rolls his eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“Well, considering that the Brotherhood has been just myself and Emma for a long time, and she once remarked on your apparent affinity for my penis, they are entirely supportive."

"Ha."

Charles and Erik can laugh together again. It feels good.

There is darkness on the horizon, but Erik ignores it. He wants out of this fight. He wants what La Vérendrye offers. A life. Happiness. Charles. More people are arriving from the south now, and with them stories. Stories Erik doesn’t want to hear because they remind him of other stories he didn’t want to hear long ago. Camps. Displacement. The stench that covered the countryside and no one talked about. The trains. They are safe here. It wouldn’t happen again.

Erik knows he’s wrong.

Charles wants to talk about it. He starts conversations about the meetings Mystique holds with increasing frequency and the latest reports and Erik shuts him up with his lips and tells him that he wants him, knowing how easily Charles can be distracted by kissing and sex and how good they can make each other feel. He silently begs for more time, for Charles and Mystique and Hank and everyone else to just give him a little more time. Always a little more time.

There is one person who can break through the walls Erik has built up, but she is gone and Erik secretly hopes she’ll never come back. Emma has told him more than once that she is a soldier. She wants to fight. There is no fight here.

Then one day she returns.

The summer is almost over. A summer of love, Erik tells Charles, who responds that he is entirely ridiculous. Erik says he is happy. Happier than he’s ever been. The compound is busily preparing for winter, when their food supplies will dip again. It will be their second winter at La Vérendrye. Raiding parties have been bringing back medical supplies. The kitchen folks have been smoking trout and venison. Berries and being dried on racks in the sunshine.

Charles has been writing, covering partially used school tablets that Mystique finds for him with notes. He has been bringing back samples of flora and fauna when he returns from his hikes, categorizing them, storing them. Erik laughs at the fact that Charles Xavier will always be a scientist, always have an unending curiosity about the world around him, and although he lacks a lab and facilities, he must still learn and study and absorb everything he can.

Their small home has become even more comfortable. Somehow Charles found a threadbare rug to put on the floor and the walls now have drawings from the children nailed onto them. They have their chairs, threadbare and lumpy, but they serve a purpose. Erik found a blanket that someone wanted to trade for his metal bending skills and at night Charles wraps up in it and read from their growing collection of books.

Erik remembers how the closest thing to home he’d ever had ended up burned, how Stryker and his men and destroyed Westchester, but they have a new home now, he and Charles. This small room in the wilderness.

The day Emma returns Erik is helping haul some rocks that are going to be used to build an outdoor oven and Charles had said something cheeky to him that morning about how good he smells sweaty, and Erik had kissed him thoroughly, leaving him with the promise of more later. He works through the morning, until the sun is close to high in the sky and it will be lunchtime soon. Erik is thinking he could use a break when someone comes running up to the mutant who is heading up their work group and he signals to the group to drop their loads. Something is going on. Everyone is going to the center of the compound.

An intruder.

Erik leaves his load where it is and wipes the sweat off his brow with the shirt he’s tucked into his waistband. He follows the rest of his crew as they head back to the compound, hoping to grab a cool drink of water during this unexpected break. They’re almost done and he’s looking forward to plunging into the lake the rinse the dirt and sweat off before Charles returns from the nature hike he’s taken some of the children on.

When he arrives a crowd has already gathered, and in the middle stands a patrol. Erik remembers the day they brought Hank to La Vérendrye, and this echos that, except he can tell the person the patrol has brought in is a woman. She stands between them, held between two mutants, a black cloth over her head. Mystique again comes walking through the crowd and comes to stand in front of the intruder, takes the hood and pulls it off.

Emma.

Erik gasps.

She is barely recognizable. Her hair is shaved, short and stubby against her scalp. She is thin, almost a shadow of the woman Erik knew, her arms no longer muscled and sinewy, her hands tremble but the most striking change is her eyes. They are haunted.

“She’s a friend,” Mystique says, nodding to the mutant who is holding her to untie her.

“I fucking told you so,” Emma spits as the mutant lets her go and she falls to the ground, rubbing her wrists and glaring up at them. Erik can no longer stay still. He pushes through the crowd and crouches next to Emma, staring at her. She has bruises on her cheek, a wound across her scalp that his festering.

“Oh my god, Emma! She needs help,” Erik says, looking up at Mystique. “Get Hank. Get someone.”

He turns his attentions back to Emma, who is looking at him with something akin to gratitude. She is happy to see him.

“Erik,” she says, relief in her voice, “It’s happening. It’s finally happening.”

The rumors. The executions. The camps.

Erik wraps his arms around Emma and pulls her to a stand. She leans her weight against him and he feels her breathe a sigh of relief. Erik helps Emma to the infirmary and they start some fluids on her. She is dehydrated and starving. Erik stays by her side, growling at everyone around him.

Raven hovers on the background, pacing, talking with some of her advisors. There are whispers all around them, but Erik can only see Emma. No matter how much she’s a pain in his ass, she is his people. She has been by his side. She helped him save Charles.

Charles is there now. Erik can hear him, always able to pick out the timber of his voice in a crowd. He cannot turn to him, cannot leave Emma.

“I never knew you cared this much, Lehnsherr,” Emma mumbles, looking at him through tired, bleary eyes.

“You’ve grown on me, Frost,” Erik says, “what the fuck did they do to you?”

Emma’s eyes squeeze shut. A tear escapes from the inside corner of one and starts to run down her face. For the first time in all the years he’s known Emma, Eriks sees her cry.

“It’s just as you said, Erik,” she says, her eyes still closed. “The registration. They’ve started putting us in camps. To “neutralize the threat to humanity”. They caught me and put me in one. It’s horrible Erik. The conditions, the people. They give everyone drugs - I don’t even know what kind of drug, but it worked. I couldn’t use my powers. Somehow I managed to escape and I made it here. Back to you. Because I know you will try to stop this. Of all the people I know, you will seek revenge. Because the people who have done this - they need to be killed.”

Erik says nothing.

Emma is right. Magneto would seek retribution. He would rise up and destroy everything in the name of vengeance, in the name of mutant-kind. What she does not know is that Magneto is dead. Erik has let him go, let go of that dream and replaced it with another.

“I’m so tired,” Emma mutters. Erik squeezes her hand tightly.

“Sleep, Emma.” he murmurs. Hank comes over and administers something into Emma’s IV and Erik does not leave her until her eyes flutter shut and her breathing slows. And only then can he lean down and whisper to her what he cannot say while she’s awake.

“I’m sorry, Emma.” Erik says softly, “I have failed you. I have failed all of you, all of mutant-kind. I’m not the leader you thought I was.”

I have chosen Charles.

Emma always knew this would happen. That was why she’d begged him to stop going to Charles long ago. She’d known better than Erik that he would ultimately choose the man he loves over his cause. It was just a matter of time and just a matter of being pushed hard enough. She knew that he would serve the world better as Magneto, although it meant he’d have to sacrifice the one thing that meant more than anything to him.

“Erik,” Charles says, his voice soft, and Erik can feel his hand on his shoulder. “She’s in good hands. Hank will make sure she gets what she needs. You can leave now.”

Erik stands, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand and Charles wraps his arms around Erik’s waist, holding him tightly to him, not caring who sees or what they think.

“What have I done?” Erik says quietly. “What have I done?”

Camps. They are establishing camps.

Charles takes them back to their home and Erik is in some sort of daze, in shock. He helps Erik into bed. His touch is gentle and he tries his best to take away the pain that has lodged itself so deep in Erik that he’s not sure if it will ever go away. It’s the knowledge that he has failed. It’s Emma’s belief in him that is so misguided.

“You need to sleep, my love,” Charles says, placing a soft kiss on Erik’s forehead.

“Yes,” Erik agrees, feeling the darkness tug him into its embrace, “sleep.”

Erik dreams of the camps. He dreams of Auschwitz and the metal gates, the barbedwire and the cold eyes of the guards. He dreams of Schmidt and pain, never ending pain, and all around him is a chorus of people, the people he’s failed, chanting.

_it’s all your fault_

_Erik Lehnsherr_

_Magneto_

_you turned your back_

_on us_

Erik wakes gasping for air, and he’s sweaty and scared. It’s dark and for a brief moment Erik can’t remember where he is and his mind starts filling in the blanks. It’s the mansion. Charles bedroom. Tomorrow is Cuba. No. It’s the car, the back seat, he and Emma are running from the law. No, Oregon, Alkali Lake, and Charles is somewhere hurting. NO...La Vérendrye. Charles is safe. He’s here. He’s HERE.

Erik reaches out, reaches to feel Charles, to feel his warm, sleeping body and there is no one next to him

Charles.

For a brief moment the fear is back. Charles is gone, he’s been take, they are hurting him, but then he hears the sound of his voice. Slowly Erik starts to realize where he is. Their home. Their bed. Charles is here...outside.

Who is he talking to?

Erik hears another voice.

Female.

Mystique.

He rolls out of bed and grabs a pair of pants, pulls them on and walks towards the doorway that has been left propped open in an attempt to let in some of the cool night air. The sun has left their little home hot during the day and Charles sometimes leaves the doors and windows open overnight to take advantage of the steep drop in temperature that often happens overnight in the mountains. Erik starts towards the doorway, towards Charles, rubbing sleep from his eyes, opening his mouth to call Charles name, to call him back to bed, then he stops and closes his mouth, standing in the middle of the room, silent. Listening. Charles and Mystique are sitting on the rough wooden stairs that make their stoop, talking.

“I can’t,” Charles is saying.

“It’s time,” Mystique says to Charles. “We’ve been pretending this is okay, that we can stay here and act like nothing is happening, but it’s not okay. We can’t avoid the truth any longer.”

“Raven!” Charles says, and he sounds upset. Erik frowns.

“I know you don’t want to tell him, but people are dying Charles. Our people. Your people.”

“It’s not his fight anymore, Raven. It’s not mine. Haven’t we paid enough? There are others. Others who are willing. Others who want this.”

“No one like you and Erik. No one strong enough. They will find us, Charles. They will find us and destroy us, unless we find them. Erik would have said the same thing in the past. He would have told you that nowhere is safe, that the only option is to fight.”

Erik hears Charles sigh. “I know. I know this Raven. I just...it’s going to kill him.”

Erik can no longer listen in silence. He steps forward, his bare feet causing the floor to creak and both Mystique and Charles startle and turn towards him.

“What’s going to kill me?” Erik asks.

Mystique turns to Charles and kisses him on the cheek, then she stands up and moves to where Erik is standing, takes his hands and hold them in hers.

“Just remember that you love him,” she says softly. “and this is part of who he is. You’ve always known that. Remember…”

“Charles?” Erik asks as Mystique drops his hands then turns and leaves. Charles is still standing in the doorway, his face full of shadows and unreadable.

“I’m so sorry, Erik.” Charles says softly.

“Charles.” Erik says again and the fear starts to bubble up. Charles gone. Charles dead.

“Camps Erik. People dying. Children dying.”

Charles dying, tubes going into his body, Erik by his bedside, praying to the gods that they will give him one more chance.

“No.” Erik says.

“I must. You know I must. I can’t stay here. Not now. Not when Stryker is still out there, not when our people are being attacked, starved, experimented on. You saw Emma. You saw what they did to her.”

Erik gave up Magneto, gave up the war, all for Charles, all for another chance. Now Charles stands in front of him and tells him that he’s going back. Back into danger. Back where they can get him again, stretch him out on another cold table, do more experiments.

Charles is right.

Erik is reaching out for Charles, groping for him, suddenly desperate to feel him, and Charles lets himself be pulled into Erik’s arms. Erik has been lying to himself. for months now. He’s known all along that they only had so much time before the war returned, before they would have to fight. It seems that time has come and all Erik wants is to beg for just one more minute, one more day, a week, a month. He’s not ready. Not yet.

“Stryker must be killed.” Charles says into the darkness and Erik knows that while all he wants anymore is peace, Charles has finally let it go. They are finally entirely on the same page.

“Yes.” Erik says with conviction. Stryker must be killed.

Charles is leaving. He’s returning to the war, but this time he won’t be alone. Erik will be by his side.

Magneto rises.

~TBC~


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles wants to kill everyone. Erik finds himself longing for peace. It's time for everyone to fight, and they start with Stryker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I'm done! Thank you so much for reading. I've really enjoyed writing this and I hope you have enjoyed reading it as well.

Charles has changed. 

Maybe he’s never been the same since Erik rescued him, but Erik has needed him to be the same Charles Xavier, so he hasn’t wanted to see the differences. Charles has always been the one constant in Erik’s life, a resolute and fixed point that he’s been able to reference when everything around him feels like it’s flying apart. He’s needed him to be the same person he was before so he’s turned a blind eye.

People change. 

Charles never talks about what was done to him at Alkali Lake. He keeps to topics about the compound, the children he adores, a rare bird sighting. He smiles slightly and looks at Erik like he’s the sun and the moon and everything in between. They never talk about the past, or even the future. They especially never talk about what was done to Charles.

Erik knows torture. He suffered at the hands of Schmidt, pushing his body to its limits in a quest to unlock that rage that can drive his powers off the chart. He knows pain. But he does not know what they did to Charles, except that they were already experienced in torturing telepaths, and he has certainty that they did not just touch Charles’ body but his also his precious, endless mind. 

The screams at night tell him as much. 

Erik can no longer ignore the changes after the night that Charles tells him Stryker must die, sounding much more like Erik’s than he ever has before. Erik knows revenge. He knows what it feels like to want someone to pay. 

Still. 

Killing Stryker. 

The nightmares get worse again. Every night Erik falls asleep knowing that he will be woken in a few hours by Charles screaming and if Erik cannot get his arms around him fast enough, Charles will end up on the other end of the room, shivering in a corner, lashing out with his fists, fighting an enemy that Erik cannot see. 

They will leave in a few weeks, going south just as fall descends. Charles wants to go right away, his eyes keen as he argues that time is of the essence, but he doesn’t win that one because Mystique tells them she and Hank will be joining him. 

“It’s my war too,” she says, looking at Erik because she knows he will understand “and I want to fight. I want to be by your side.”

Charles looks like he wants to convince her otherwise, wants to go around and around until she admits defeat and remains in La Vérendrye. Erik doesn’t argue. Mystique will do what she wants. She always has and Erik has never stood in her way. This is something that Charles has never understood about his little sister. She has her own path in life and she will follow it. 

Erik also knows that Mystique is like him. She is not going to let Charles out of her sight and if this is what he needs to do, she isn’t going to let him do it alone.

Emma will take over. This is part of the reason for their delay. She needs to get better, to heal, and to learn the job. Erik watches Emma and Mystique as they walk together, Emma’s blond hair growing back, Mystique’s glowing red, heads bent together, and it makes him strangely happy. What a strange turn of events that Emma Frost who hates the world, hates people, will now become the caretaker of an entire community. Somehow Erik knows that she is up to the job. Not just that. She will shine.

Charles has changed. There is a darkness in him that Erik has never seen, an edginess that wasn’t there before.

Ever since Emma returned and told them the camps were more than rumor, that they were real and they were killing mutants, he’s quieter. He spends long hours sitting by the edge of the lake staring at nothing discernable, lost in his thoughts, and Erik knows better than to disturb him. Sometimes Erik just sits watching Charles as he watches nothing, staring at the man he loves more than anything on this earth, but he never approaches him. Whatever Charles is going through, it’s something he must go through alone. 

One night, as they lay spent in their bed, sweaty and sticky with come, after Charles had demanded that Erik fuck him hard, and when Erik had submitted to his demands, Charles had growled that it wasn’t hard enough until Erik lost all form of gentleness and slammed into him so hard he saw stars, Erik rolls to face Charles and looks at him, searching his face for something familiar. He wants to see something from before, a spark or hint of the endless optimism that has always been part of Charles Xavier. He sees nothing. Erik takes a deep breath and speaks, not sure how the question that’s been rattling around in his head for days now will be received.

“Do you still hold humanity in your hands, Charles?” Erik asks, his voice just a whisper, his heart in his throat. Will Charles answer him, or will he jump up and tell Erik that he’s an idiot for asking such questions. Charles does not move. He blinks at him, looking a bit startled and then his brow furrows, a sign that he is thinking about what Erik has asked. After a long moment, Charles looks away from Erik’s unwavering gaze. 

“No.” he says, staring into the darkened corners of their room. 

“You’re okay with killing Stryker.” Erik says. 

Charles looks back at Erik and does not answer but he nods. Yes. Stryker must die. Erik knows this. Erik swallows then speaks again. 

“With more than Stryker?”

Charles nods. His eyes are filled with tears. “All of them, Erik. I want to kill them all.”

Erik can’t breathe. 

He remembers what seems like a lifetime ago when it was just him and Emma and her endless accusations that he was becoming just like Charles - weak and pitying of humanity. Now Charles has become who Erik used to be. Merciless. Angry.

He’s not sure why this surprises him. Erik has experienced torture. Erik has wanted revenge at the exclusion of everything else in his life. It’s just it’s Charles. His Charles. Champion of all people, the one who is always looking for the good in everyone - both human and mutant-kind - and now he lies next to him and tell him that he wants to kill them all. 

“You could kill them all.” Eriks says softly, saying what they both know is true but almost always goes unspoken. Charles can reach out and twist minds into nothingness. He can select the ones he feels should no longer live and end their time on earth as easily as he can blink his eyes or scratch his nose. 

“I know,” Charles says, his voice flat. 

“You could kill Stryker right now. I’m guessing you know where he is.”

“I do.” Charles admits.

“Then do it.” Erik says, and for some reason he wants to push Charles on this, to make him prove that his words are real, that Professor X is truly gone and in his place is someone who lives only for vengeance. Kill Stryker now, probe into his mind and crush it, squeeze out all of his hatred and evil. Leave his body limp and lifeless on the floor. Kill him and then they can all wake up tomorrow and live their lives again. 

“I don’t want to,” Charles says, and a small flame of hope ignites in Erik, hope that Charles is not entirely wounded, that somewhere deep inside his ideals, the old Charles Xavier still lives. The flame is extinguished as quickly as it ignites with Charles’ next words and the way his mouth twists. “I want to see his face when I kill him.”

Oh god. Erik chokes back a sob. He pulls Charles close, holding him tightly, aching for everything they have lost. He wants to tell him that he knows what it’s like to live on only revenge, that he has thought it would be enough, that it could bring him peace, and it was only through meeting Charles and discovering how it felt to love and be loved that he could finally see that he’d been lying to himself. But he can’t. Because he knows what Charles will ask him then. If revenge wasn’t enough then why did he kill Shaw? Why did he drive the coin through his forehead, push it through the grey matter of his brain and out the back of his skull if it did not bring some element of peace. Erik would be lying if he told Charles there wasn't catharsis in that moment. 

They will leave when the leaves on the trees start to turn and the days get shorter and sometimes the air smells of an early snow. 

Time is ticking away day by day, and Erik knows that he will never be happier than he has been at La Vérendrye. He tells Charles this as he looks around their one room home, wanting to memorize every detail because in a matter of weeks they will be gone and will most likely never return. 

“We will have many homes, my love. This will just be one of them.” Charles murmurs, wrapping his arms around Erik. “No matter wherever go, you are my home.”

Erik almost sags with relief. Not everything about Charles has changed. He still has a way of melting Erik’s heart. 

Erik spends time with Emma, sitting next to her as she smokes cigarette after cigarette and he notices that her hands now tremor from time to time. They are all carrying scars, no one remaining untouched. All because of Stryker and the government that fears mutants. It’s times like this, when he looks at Emma, who is so unchanged, as fierce and angry as ever, but still so different, so sad , when he holds Charles as he screams in the middle of the night, that he understands that someone must pay for everything they’ve been through. It’s these times when that ideology he thought he'd put to rest rears it’s ugly head and he knows that no one will be safe as long as humanity is in charge of mutant-kind and he knows that lives must be taken to make things right. 

It’s not that Erik doesn’t want to destroy the humans. He wants to kill them all - he has not suddenly seen the value of humanity in the way Charles used to. It’s that he would stay in La Vérendrye, block out the world if he could, and if that means humanity is spared his wrath, Erik can live with that. Unlike the rest of them, Charles, Emma, Mystique, Hank, he no longer wants the fight. It used to be his war. Now it’s theirs.

Back when he was young and naive, a lifetime ago, which is laughable because at the time he already felt jaded and used up by the world, he had looked at Charles across that chess board that sat in the study of Westchester, the one that has undoubtedly been reduced to ashes, and told Charles that peace had never been an option for him. Now it is the only option he wants, but in a stroke of irony, Erik cannot not take it. Not when no one else around him wants it too.

“I will follow you to the ends of the earth,” Erik whispers to Charles one night as the other man shudders against him. It’s the truth. He has tried living apart from Charles, tried going his own way, and that only brought him heartache. Now he will follow him, and where Charles goes, Erik will be by his side, and that means if Charles wants to kill them all, Erik will help him. If peace isn’t an option for Charles, then it isn’t for Erik either. He will not just follow Charles to the ends of the earth, he will follow him off the edge if need be. As long as they’re together. 

“You’re pathetic,” Emma sniffs at him during one of the many meetings of the defunct Brotherhood, which is still Erik and Emma, Azazel either still making good on his threat to stay away or he’s been detained and put in a camp. The thought makes Erik ache. 

“You’re jealous, Frost,” Erik answers.

“Maybe.” Emma admits. 

They go south in the fall. The leaves are starting to turn and the entire world is a mass of warm, fiery color. Emma is almost running the compound now. Hank has been gathering medical supplies for their journey. Charles us still quiet. There are only a few more days left.

When Erik asks where they will go once they leave La Vérendrye and Charles tells him Westchester.

“It’s burned Charles,” Erik says, wondering if maybe he’s forgotten or blocked it out on purpose, not wanting to imagine the once grand home of his family reduced to a blackened pile of rubble.

“There is more to Westchester than you know, Erik.” Charles tells him. A bunker built by his borderline crazy, paranoid grandfather during WWI in case of an invasion, that was then used to store contraband liquor during prohibition, and then developed by Charles and Hank into a small system of rooms and tunnels. A perfect hideout for the leaders of the mutant revolution.

“Do you miss it?” Erik asks,

“Miss what?”

“Westchester. Your home.”

Charles is quiet for a long time. “I don’t know,” he finally says. “It was never going to last. Somehow I thought that place would protect me, keep the world out. And it did for a while, but now it just feels like stupidity and naivety on my part. So no, I don’t miss what Westchester had come to mean to me. What I hate the most is that everything is gone. Pictures. All my books. My room. All I have left are memories. Nothing I can hold onto. I don’t even have my mother’s ashes.”

Charles is crying. Erik hates the people who have done this. 

Finally the day comes. 

The night before they leave Erik and Charles say their final goodbyes to their home in the best way they know how. Erik stretches Charles out their bed, naked and imploring, and Erik is kneeling between his spread legs, looking down at him in the dim light of the lamp, taking in every single detail, memorizing him. 

Life on the road will be different. They will not have any of this - a home, privacy, long days and nights. Everything is about to change. 

“I love you, Charles.” Erik says as the man he adores gazes up at him, chest heaving, lips bruised from neverending kisses, eyes half-lidded with lust. Charles squirms a little and Erik knows what will come next: begging, commanding, Charles telling Erik to fuck him, those delightful delicious Charles-like mewling sounds, but not yet. Not quite yet. Erik needs this moment more than he’d ever realized.

“I know,” Charles says softly. 

Does he know. Erik isn’t sure. 

“I’ve loved you since the moment I met you,” Erik continues. “in Miami when you plunged into the water like the total idiot you are and kept me from drowning myself like the idiot I am.”

Charles smiles and it’s one of the rare ones that actually reaches all the way to his eyes.

“Yes, Erik, you were indeed a idiot.”

“I don’t know, Charles. You’re the one who went in after me. Charles Xavier, patron saint of lost causes.”

Charles chuckles, “Clearly we’re both complete fools.” 

“I’ve always found your foolishness terribly charming,” Erik confesses. 

Erik continues to look down at Charles and the mood shifts between them. This is no longer about fucking. It’s about something else. Something bigger than both of them. They are standing at the edge of an abyss so wide that Erik can’t see the other side and it terrifies him.

“It won’t change anything, you know.” Erik says quietly. Charles blinks up at him, frowning a little but he does not look away. He just stares up at Erik and this emboldens Erik to say the words that have been lurking on the edges of his consciousness, the ones he’s afraid to say. 

“It won’t close the camps. It won’t make them hate us any less. There will be someone to take Stryker’s place, and someone after that person. This isn’t about one person. It never has been.”

There are still things Erik leaves unsaid, that Charles is already changed so much and this might change him forever. 

“What about Shaw,” Charles asks. “Did that change anything?”

“Not really,” Erik answers honestly, “I thought it would, but it didn’t. It didn’t give me back my childhood, didn’t bring back my mother, didn’t take away enough of my pain. I still couldn’t sleep. That wasn’t what changed things for me.”

“What did, Erik? What changed things for you?” Charles asks sincerely and he’s reaching up to trace a finger along the hard line of Erik’s jaw, a gesture so familiar it makes Erik ache. He smiles a little because the answer to what changed has always felt so complicated but in the end it was the simplest thing on earth. 

Love. 

“You, Charles.” Erik murmurs, “You changed things. You changed everything.”

“Don’t…” Charles gasps and now he’s looking away. “I need this. I don’t think you understand…”

Charles is wrong. Erik understands. He understands more than he wants to. 

“I held him for you, Erik.” Charles gasps, his eyes returning to Erik’s. “I held him as you drove that coin through his skull, even though I knew it would not bring you peace. Even though the pain was so bad that I wanted to let go to make it stop. I held him because I knew you needed it.”

Erik nods. His eyes are filling with tears and they start to spill onto his cheeks, wetting his face, and wants to wipe at them with his hand but he can’t move. 

“I held him because I loved you.”

Charles had held Shaw then Erik had betrayed Charles by leaving him on the beach in Cuba. He wants to ask Charles if it was worth it, but knows the answer is yes. If Charles had refused him then, Erik knows that would have been the end of them. It would have been to much for Erik to bear. 

“I need you to do the same for me, Erik. I need this. I need to kill Stryker.”

Erik nods. He knows this already, knows what Charles needs, knows that he cannot deny the man who holds his heart. Even if it tears him apart. Even if it means that it will also tear Charles apart. 

“I am not asking you not to kill him, Charles. I would never ask that of you,” Erik whisper, “I am just saying that it will not bring you what you want. I cannot believe that the man who believed in the good of ALL of people, humans and mutants, who dreamed of equality for everyone and a world where we stand side by side, is going to find peace by shedding blood. I know what it’s like to wreak havoc and destruction, to not just take a life but to take hundreds of lives in one fell swoop, and to wake up the next day and still have to go on. I don’t know if you do.”

Charles is crying now, his shoulders shaking with sobs and Erik is entirely overwhelmed with how much he feels for this man.

“Please stop,” Charles chokes out, “I can’t do this Erik. Not when we leave tomorrow. Not when you know how much I need this. Not when it’s coming from YOU of all people.”

“I’m sorry,” Erik says softly, “I have been trying to find a way to say this because I know saying the wrong thing could tear us apart, and above everything else, I cannot lose you again. And if I say nothing, maybe you will wake up the day after we kill Stryker and his death will change nothing for you and I’ll lose you anyway. I just need you to know, even if it makes no difference in what we’re about to do.”

Charles stills for a moment and watches Erik with eyes soft and full of love, and all of his anger and distress has melted away for just that moment. 

“I know, my love. I’ve always known.”

“Charles,”

“Now, fuck me Erik. Fuck me until all of this leaves my brain, fuck me until I can’t see straight, make me beg so I don’t have to think about any of this anymore.”

Erik doesn’t answer. He leans forward, captures Charles mouth with his and kisses him, putting everything he can’t say into that kiss, and Charles answers him with a ferocity that stuns Erik to the core. 

Erik likes being on the road. It’s a clear, sunny day and the sky is that smoky blue that always seems to mark the change from summer to fall and there is a slight scent of wood smoke in the air. Mystique drives and Hank sits next to her, talking aimlessly about the scenery that flashes by. Charles is slumped in the back seat, staring out the window and Erik is staring at him, his fingers itching to reach across the car and touch him. 

It was the same pattern. They teleport to Montreal and find a car to steal. Erik finds that he misses Emma and the ease with which she could accomplish these types of things. They find something large enough to accommodate all of them, throw their packs in the back and head south to the border. South to Westchester. Towards home. 

No one knows what they will find there. No one has seen pictures. Hank is the only one who even witnessed the great house being engulfed by flames. They will find out soon enough because it’s a short drive from Montreal to Westchester and they should reach the grounds by nightfall.

When they finally arrive Mystique stops the car in the circular driveway that used to lead to the front door but now sits in front of a charred, burned pile of rubble. 

“Oh my god,” she says, her voice stunned.

In one quick movement she is pushing open the door of the car, stumbling out, her feet crunching on the gravel, then she sinks to her knees and starts to scream. Hank jumps out of the car and runs around it to kneel next to Raven, his arms going around her, holding her as she shakes. 

Charles stares at what is left of the home he grew up in, just stares, and his mouth is pinched and tight. The air is filled with sobs, and they do not belong to Mystique but to Raven, because this loss does not belong to Mystique but to the girl who stole into the kitchen of this great home so long ago because she was hungry and ended up finding a family. 

“Do you see why someone must die for this?” Charles says. 

There is pain on Charles’ face for an entirely different reason. They are not just looking at what used to be his home. They are staring at a graveyard. 

“The children.” Erik says softly, and he can almost hear their screams as the fire raged. The ones that weren’t shot on site. The ones left alive just to die in the flames. 

“I’ve never seen it any other way, Charles.” Erik answers, his eyes stinging with tears. “I just don’t know if retribution is the answer.”

“What else should we do?” Charles whispers. “What else?” 

His eyes are locked on Mystique who is no longer screaming, her body still shaking with sobs. Erik does not answer Charles question because there is nothing he can say that hasn’t been said. 

They find the entrance to the tunnels, picking through the rubble, pulling away blackened beams, glass melted by the fire, nothing recognizable. Stryker and his team did an admirable job of destruction. Finally they clear away enough to find the hatch, and Charles punches in a code that causes it to open. 

They are home.

The tunnels are dark and smell damp, but Charles fumbles around until he finds a switch and slowly lights flicker on.

“Separate generator,” Hank says proudly, “I made sure we added that.”

“Smart,” Erik says, looking at Hank with admiration. Hank grins at him. 

They roll out their sleeping bags in one of the rooms and Mystique brings some tins of food that she found in one of the storage closets. They sit in a circle, digging the cold food out with spoons and Erik thinks it’s not the best he’s ever had but not the worst either. The company makes it better. 

After her breakdown, Mystique is in better spirits and she and Charles entertain Erik and Hank with tales of growing up Xavier. They tell stories about pranks they played on servants and the time that Charles has scandalized one of Sharon’s dinner parties by chasing her dogs right through the middle of it. Charles laughs until he’s crying, and Mystique throws her arms around him, clinging to him. It’s as if they are banishing the ghosts that now live here. 

After dinner is done, they all fall silent, everyone thinking about what lies ahead. 

“Where is he?” Erik asks Charles. Charles falls silent and gets a faraway look in his eyes for a brief moment then looks back at Erik. 

“Right now? He’s singing his son to sleep. Jason.” Charles chuckles a bit. “It’s funny…”

“Funny?” Erik asks.

“Jason is a mutant. I can see it. A strong one. The man who will destroy mutant-kind has a mutant for a son.”

“And if he knew this?”

“He would kill Jason too.”

“Where do we go tomorrow.”

Charles is quiet again.

“Pentagon. Stryker has a meeting there tomorrow. Something about funding for a new program. It’s called…” Charles shuts his eyes, searching silently, “Weapon X.” Charles’ eyes fly open. “Erik! He’s going to try to kill us all. All the mutants.”

Erik goes cold. 

“Do you see why he needs to die? A mind like his cannot be allowed to continue in this world.”

“Charles, my love, I’ve never seen it any differently.”

No one sleeps much that night. Erik tosses and turns, unable to get comfortable, missing their bed, missing Charles, warm and naked sleeping next to him. Charles sleeps fitfully, whimpering from time to time, talking in his sleep, and Erik reaches out of his sleeping bag into the cool air of the room to soothe him. At some point he hears Mystique quietly sobbing as her sadness creeps back in. They are all consumed by what lies ahead. 

The sun is barely over the eastern horizon when they leave the next morning. They have four more hours until they reach D.C. and the pentagon. Erik drives. Charles messes with the radio, searching for some sort of distraction. 

“What do we do after today?” Erik asks somewhere in the middle of New Jersey. Charles looks over at him.

“We fight, Erik.” he says, as if the answer is obvious. “because you’re right. This will not end with Stryker. We free our people, build and army and we fight.”

“And more die?”

“People die in war, Erik. You of all people know this. The humans have asked for this. They have refused to put aside their fear. They refuse to see that we are no different than them.”

“And the ones who have not asked for this, both human and mutant. The ones who believe that peace can happen?”

Charles’ mouth twists. 

“Collateral damage.”

Erik has nothing left to say. 

When the reach the pentagon they actually just walk in, and Erik thinks this is exactly why they fear us. There is nothing that can hold a mutant back, and he’s thankful that Stryker hasn’t thought to shield this entire building with his blocker technology. After today all buildings will be outfitted with them because the military will no longer be unaware of the powers of mutants. People scramble to get out of their way, saluting them as they go because Charles manipulates them to see a group of five star generals striding through the hallways. 

“Clever,” Erik says. Charles smiles, clearly proud of himself. 

“Always, my love.” Charles murmurs. 

They follow Charles winding down hallways, getting in an elevator. They go down, under the building, down to the subterranean levels. Charles guides them, his mind locked on Stryker's. They wind through more blank corridors until Charles stops outside a door. Erik looks at it.

"Here?" Erik asks. 

"Yes." Charles says. "Inside."

Erik moves forward to stand next to Charles, glancing over at the other man whose face is stone, eyes fixed on the door. 

"Might as well make an entrance than," Erik says. Charles nods. Hank's skin is starting to marble with blue. Mystique pulls up her shoulders, already in her blue form. They are mutant and proud. It is time for Stryker to meet his enemy face to face. 

Erik extends his hand, feeling the metal of the door, his blood rushing through his veins, heart pounding. He pulls his hand back towards himself and the door rips from it's hinges and crashes into the wall behind them. All four of the mutants surge into the room at once. 

It's a conference room, nothing special, with a long table surrounded by orange upholstered chairs, and in the chairs are men in military uniform, every one turned, staring at the door, their mouths agape. 

At the head is the table stands Stryker. He's not nearly as imposing as Erik had expected. He's actually not that old, a little paunchy, and entirely ordinary. If Erik had seen him any other time, walking down the street, at the park with his son, he wouldn't have given him a second thought, let alone even considered that this man is the mastermind of a yet to happen mutant genocide. 

The entire room is unnaturally still, and for a moment Erik thinks maybe Charles is controlling the minds of the people in the chairs, but then it comes alive in a flurry of activity as every man in the room with a gun reaches for it. Erik raises his hand and all the guns rise into the air then drop to the ground. 

"Oh no no," Erik chides and with a quick twist he crumples all the guns. 

Stryker does not move, from where he stands and his eyes are locked with Charles, and slowly a cruel smile spreads over his face. He speaks, his voice deep and measured.

"And this, gentlemen, is why we need Weapon X." Stryker turns his attention to Charles. "I shouldn't have been so greedy professor, so enthralled with exploring your mind, with how far I could push you. I should have killed you when I had the opportunity."

Erik wonders again what was done to Charles and he suspects it was far more than the physical torment Shaw had favored.

"You will have to die with those regrets," Charles says smoothly. "I've come to pay you back for all you've done."

"And your sister is here, such a fine specimen, such an unusual mutation."

Mystique bristles and Hank puts his huge, beastly blue hand on her arm.

"Of course Erik is by your side. The great Magneto. How you responded when you thought we were hurting him. Everyone has their weak point, professor. He was yours. He still is.

Charles is shaking now but he still stands by Erik, not moving a muscle. Erik raises his hand, feeling for the iron in Stryker's blood, wanting to rip it out. 

"Don't." Charles whispers and Erik drops his hand to his side. "He's mine."

"You can kill me Xavier." Stryker continues, "but you will not stop what I have started. Mutants will die. All of you will die."

Erik is not watching Stryker. He's watching Charles who is fighting for control, his mouth pinched, hands clenched into fists, then...

"STOP!" Charles roars and all the men seated at the conference table grab their heads with their hands and start screaming as Charles twists himself inside their minds. 

"Charles." Erik says sharply, “No. You have to stop.”

Charles doesn’t respond and the men continue to scream in agony. Eriks starts to feel the panic well up. He knows Charles no longer cares about any of the humans, but this...this will be seen as an act of terrorism. Even if Charles never wants peace, if he spends the rest of his life fighting the humans, this will guarantee they spend the rest of their lives fighting back. 

“CHARLES,” Erik bellows. “STOP.”

Charles jerks a little, and the men at the table all collapse, still holding their heads, but the pain is gone. 

“They hate us Erik.” Charles says quietly, looking at Erik. “Why did you stop me?”

Erik swallows. He had promised himself he would not stand in Charles way and he had broken that promise. 

“Because this will make them hate us more, and that may be a burden you are willing to bear, but they will hate all of us Charles. Not just you.” Erik says softly, “These men here, these stupid, useless, self-inflated humans, are the top military leaders of our nation and if you kill them, every mutant will have to answer for their deaths. If you think this man is bad…” Erik nods towards Striker, “he is just one man. The entire government will hate you...will hate all of us”

Stryker is eyeing them now, inching towards the back of the room, and Erik and Charles’ discussion is so intense, neither of them sees that they have left him alone and there is a door...a door he is getting closer and closer to. 

Erik sees Mystique spring forward and he loses his train of thought as she does three flips down the conference table and lands in front of Stryker, one foot on the ground and the other pinning Stryker to the wall, the arch of her foot pressed firmly into his windpipe and Stryker gasps, a high pitched whining noise as he airway is partially crushed.

Charles and Erik attention returns to the man who is now pinned to the wall.

“No fucking way,” Mystique hisses. “We’re not done with you yet.”

Stryker’s bravado starts to slip away and for the first time Erik senses actual fear. Yes, William Stryker. Fear. Because today you will die. 

“What would Magneto do?” Charles asks, his eyes returning to Erik, looking for an answer, “because, Erik, you know what I want. You know I want to kill them.”

Erik does know. 

“I would let them go.” Erik says softly, and “I would now and I would then. Because not letting them go means that the ones who pay are the children. OUR children, and they are the ones who should never pay for our sins. There is some collateral damage that is simply not acceptable.”

Charles nods. His eye are shining with tears and behind them Erik finally sees understanding. 

“Okay, Erik,” Charles says softly, “I will let them go. I’ll wipe their minds so they’ll never remember what happened and let them go. I don’t want to but I will if you say it’s the right thing to do.”

Erik smiles in spite of the fact that his whole body is tight with tension. 

“And Stryker?” Erik asks. Charles gazes shift to look at William Stryker who is still pinned against the wall by Mystique’s foot. Charles does not answer Erik’s question but instead walks slowly up to Stryker and stops, facing the man who kidnapped and tortured him. 

“You are an abomination,” Stryker growls, then winces as Mystique pushes her foot further into his windpipe. “A monster.” 

“No,” Charles says, his voice soft and deadly, “you are. You tortured me. You sent images of the people I love into my head and made me think they were the ones hurting me. You destroyed the man I love over and over again in so many ways until I could not scream anymore. All to see how I would react. All to study my mind. You are the monster.”

Erik can’t move. 

“You can kill me if you want, Xavier, but my work will live on. There are people waiting to take it on, who despise your kind. My way is the way of the righteous. My way will win.” 

“Your way is the way of death. Thousands of deaths, millions if you could do it. YOUR way will put you along side the others who have destroyed entire communities and peoples because they were different.” Charles takes a deep, shaking breath and Erik thinks he’s never seen him look so strong as she stands with his shoulders square and his face angry. 

“YOUR way, Stryker, would have you sacrifice your child, your son, because he is one of us.”

Stryker’s mouth falls open and his eyes grow wide and all the color drains from his face.

“J...J...Jason?”

“I’ve touched his mind and he is a mutant, Stryker. A useless, stinking mutant, that in your world deserves to die.” 

“...Jason? My son?...”

“A child, like all the other children you have killed, the children whose bones are entombed at Westchester, the ones who are starving in the camps that you set up.”

“NO!” Stryker howls as if in pain and Charles does not move, does not blink, just watches as the knowledge sinks in that Stryker’s son is one of them. And for some reason, that is enough, because Charles then turns to look at Erik who is standing dumbfounded, staring at Stryker, who continues to make the most wretched noise as he sobs his son’s name over and over. 

“Let’s go home,” Charles says to Erik, his eyes wide and blue and somehow less haunted. “I want you to take me home.”

In the end Charles does not kill Stryker. He actually doesn’t kill anyone. He also doesn’t leave Stryker untouched. Charles wipes out the worst parts of his brain, removing bits and pieces, taking out the most vile parts, and will this keep Stryker from turning into one of the biggest threats ever seen to mutant-kind? Only time will tell, but for now, Weapon-X has been pushed to the distant future. 

They leave Mystique and Hank at Westchester, and Charles promises that he’ll tell Emma to send people to join them soon. He may have spared Stryker, but there is still a war brewing and there is still a fight that must happen. The camps are operating. Mutants must be rescued. There are still parents who are kicking their children out when they find out they are different. All these mutants will need a place to go. All these mutants will need a leader. Mystique is the one who will become this for them. This is her path and Charles now knows who she is destined to become. He smiles at her with so much love that it hurts to watch. His sister. Charles kisses Mystique on the cheek outside the rubble that was once Westchester and tells her he loves her.

“You should have let me crush that asshole’s windpipe slowly until he was as blue and Hank and myself.” Mystique says. 

 

Charles laughs a little. 

“In the end I decided to do something different. I realized that killing Stryker would just be the beginning of killing a lot of people, and I wasn’t sure what I would have to show for that in the end.”

“Ever the fool,” Raven sighs, hugging him back. 

“Now,” Charles says a little playfully, and Erik realizes how long it’s been since he’s seen a spark of humor in the telepath’s eye and he aches just thinking about how dark the world must have seemed for Charles, “take care of Hank. We’re going to miss him.”

When goodbyes are done, Erik and Charles climb into the car, Erik in the drivers seat, Charles sliding in next to him, scooting over until he’s right next to him, crowding Erik, and he dips his head and rests it on Erik’s shoulder.

“Thank you my friend,” Charles says softly, “for everything.”

Erik doesn’t ask him to explain. He knows what Charles is saying. Thank you for standing by him, for letting him figure all of this out, for never doubting what he needed to do, even if they disagreed. Erik starts the car then takes Charles hand in his and squeezes it.

“Where to, my love,” Erik asks with a small smile.

“I told you, Erik,” Charles says, “Take me home.”

He and Erik go home. Not to the tunnels under Westchester. Not somewhere else entirely different, but home. Back to their one room cabin, to their mutant family. Back to La Vérendrye. Back home to each other. 

~Fin~


End file.
